


Hold Me Down

by BitterlySpiteful



Series: Above [1]
Category: Original Work
Genre: Angels, Fantasy, Magic
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-05-21
Updated: 2018-09-20
Packaged: 2019-05-09 17:58:43
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 10
Words: 29,605
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/14720901
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/BitterlySpiteful/pseuds/BitterlySpiteful
Summary: There’s a snap of metal when he hits a tree. Pain lances down his shoulder and back and he cries out as the mechanical left wing is almost wrenched from its port. His crash-land is swept to the side when something gets caught in the branches of another tree. He hits the ground, bounces, and slams into a sapling, and then is snared in a fence of barbed wire.The angel slides to a halt in the middle of a yard.And there he lays.





	1. crashland

**Author's Note:**

> i wont be explaining much of the world in the notes, because that just takes away the immersion of the story. so lmao youre gonna suffer for a bit, i guess.
> 
> im already writing a second 'book' to this. techincally, what im posting in this one is a rewritten version of an older story. so this first one is all plotted out, but not entirely written, so you might have to be a bit patient from me.
> 
> the title of the first story is taken from 'hold me down' by halsey. great song for this whole thing.

The glass shatters beneath his weight, his feet leaving the ground as he tips backwards, out through the window. The other angel follows him through, wings spread wide, bladed edges glinting in the light from inside. 

The angel spears a knife through his chest, sinking it to the hilt. The point scrapes against the metal ports on his back. He jerks his left wing up and with a  _schink_ , the featherblades extend. He tries to swing it around to catch the other angel across the neck, but the two of them part just in time for him to miss. 

Knife still stuck in his chest, he tries to spread his wings and flip over. But his right wing groans, and locks, and suddenly he can’t move it. The metal pieces in it grind against each other, creaking and scraping. He cries out, “Nitram!”

Clawing upwards, as if to grab onto something, the last thing he sees is his brother above him, wings spread wide, and his red eyes glowing against the stormy night.

Then the clouds envelop him and he falls.

And then just like that, he’s passing through the storm. Lightning crackles around him, and fear settles in his gut. He spreads his working wing and flips back onto his stomach.

Grasping at the right wing, he manages to snag a wire and pull it upwards. For a short moment, his flight path swings and flattens out.

Then a bright flash, and a burst of pain, and then he can’t see or hear or move.

He comes back to himself just a few moments before he hits the ground. He has enough time to see the trees and ground rush up to them.

There’s a  _snap_ of metal when he hits a tree. Pain lances down his shoulder and back and he cries out as the left wing is almost wrenched from its port. His crash-land is swept to the side when something gets caught in the branches of another tree. He hits the ground, bounces and slams into a sapling, and then is snared in a fence of barbed wire.

The angel slides to a halt in the middle of a yard.

 

And there he lays.

 

Suddenly, a light turns on, washing the backyard with yellow. The angel groans against the light, clenching his eyes shut and trying to curl in on himself. He can’t feel his left arm. When he tries to move the metal wings on his back, pain shoots throughout his body. He falls still. 

He hears an old screen door creak open. There’s a short murmur of a conversation, and then two sets of footsteps approach him.

A gun clicks.

“Jordan, he’s injured.”

“Good. Easier to kill.”

He tries to speak, but all that comes out is a pained wheeze. When he raises a hand up to his chest, he finds that the dagger is still there. Slowly, he lifts his head, only to be staring into the barrel of a rifle.

Somehow, he manages to lift one of his wings. The feathers clink together, rattling, a clear threat.

Then someone moves, shoving the rifle away and stepping between him and the gun. The angel collapses again, gasping for breath. Frothy cyan blood drips from his mouth, staining the grass. When he looks down, he realizes he’s lying in a puddle of it.  

The person who had pushed the gun away turns around to him, slowly trying to get him to his feet.

He hisses and tries to shove the human away, spitting out, “G-G- Go a _way_.”

“Seto, get away from that thing.”

The human, Seto, pauses to glance back at the other one. “You’re a doctor.  _Help_ him.”

There’s a tense silence.

Then, “Help me get him in the house.”

They grab him by his arms and drag him to the house. It’s painful, and he’s pretty sure he blacks out for a bit for a few moments. The next thing he wakes up to is being shoved up onto a pull-out bed from the couch. Something cracks, and breaks inside it. The older human curses under his breath.

One of the two move to grab the knife, but is stopped. “Don’t, he’s bleeding enough as it is. Just— Let me do my job.”

The last thing he hears is the other human saying something, then he finally passes out.


	2. close your eyes, devil, cease

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> shaky conversations with the monster in the living room

The next few weeks pass in a daze of painkillers, sleep, and the occasional conversation held between the two humans.

He isn’t sure _what_ the older human is giving him, but he thinks it’s in the water. It makes him too tired to move, too tired for magic to flow, and he lays, weak and helpless on the makeshift bed they made on the floor.

None of the furniture will comfortably hold him and the couch broke; the humans had shoved furniture out of the way and dragged two mattresses into the middle of the living room. He lays awkwardly on his side, one wing sometimes sheltering him, but most of the time the humans try to keep the wings off of him, sprawled across the floor.

His time healing is spent mostly in a delirious, out-of-it state of mind. They keep him drugged, keep him limp and disoriented. At some point, the younger asks what his name is.

He’s partially lucid, but not fully enough to understand who he’s talking to. So he mumbles, “Muart-Muartehn-n,” and at the human’s flinch, knows he’s speaking in his native tongue. He works his mouth for a moment, trying to swallow down the confusion- Where is he? - and he tries again, “Mart- Mura-”

“Martin?”

It’s close enough, and he is tired. He nods and slumps back down, head lolling to the side. The walls blur and everything tilts back and forth until he closes his eyes.

[...]

Pain lances down his back and he howls, throwing himself into a fit. There’s a loud shout and crash, and the crackling sound of metal on metal. The sound of windchimes rattles through the living room as he reflexively tries to draw his wings up. One hangs limply, sometimes twitching, lifting a few inches from the floor. The other is broken and a few pieces fall from it, but it manages to rise slightly.

Martin pulls himself together enough to roll onto his stomach and get on his hands and knees. He crouches, roaring in pain and fear, and extends the featherblades. Lights reflect off the metal, interrupted by the blue-green blood splatters. The two humans scramble away from him, the younger ducking behind the other.

They all stand like that for some time. Martin heaves for air, gasping and shaking. For the first time since his crash, he realizes he’s almost thinking clearly.

“Damn,” the older human says, and pulls a small dagger out from his back pocket. To Martin, it might as well be a butter knife. His almost-working wing rattles in a warning.

He doesn’t speak but he glares the humans down. They’ll crack, he knows, but he can’t leave or even escape. They’re at a standstill.

(They aren’t.)

(They all know that he’s defenseless if the humans truly decide to just kill him.)

Finally, the older one spits out, “We’re trying to _help_ you. We’re not here to heal you just for you to kill us.”

He had a point. Not as if Martin had to listen to an animal, but-

He sees the older’s hand move, fingers sketching something in the air. Before Martin can react, the magic takes effect, and he staggers. Then, slowly, his limbs start to feel heavier. “You- But you’re human,” he mumbles, and collapses back onto the mattress. Now that he's seen it, he realizes that he can taste the magic in the air. Humans shouldn't  _have_ magic, shouldn't be able to use it. It's just his luck he landed with these two. "- human, you're- You-"

The two don’t respond in time; he’s out the moment his eyes close.

[...]

When he wakes up, he feels immensely better. It takes him a while to realize he’s lying on his back, and not on his side or stomach like he had been previously. He shifts, aiming to bring his wings up, only to find that they’re _gone_.

With a startled gasp Martin sits up, hand instinctively going around his side, trying to feel for the smooth metal. But the weight isn’t there, and he’s still in the human’s house. He glances around wildly, eyes snapping to the human nearby. He startles like a deer, eyes widening.

They stare at each other for a moment. The human hastily drops the feather he’d been holding. Martin holds back a wince at the poor handling. “Sorry,” the human blurts. Martin knows he’s the younger one. Seto, he recalls, is its name. “I didn’t-”

“Those- aren’t yours.” He’s surprisingly mostly able to keep the pain out of his voice. Seto raises his hands slightly as if trying to placate a rabid animal. “I won’t- I won’t touch it again, I swear.”

Martin growls at him, slowly moving to kneel instead of being in a vulnerable, awkward sitting position. Seto starts backing away. “You took them off.”

“Jordan said we had to. You couldn’t keep sleeping on your injuries.”

He has to catch his breath before he hisses, “How did you know how to take them off?”

Seto’s mouth opens, closes, and he glances to the left. Martin jerks around to find the older human, Jordan, standing in the doorway to the living room. From the looks of the tile floor behind him, he was just in the kitchen. “I see you’re feeling better,” Jordan mutters.

Martin interrupts him, “You use magic.”

At this, Jordan shifts uncomfortably. Seto shoots him a glare and hisses, “You said he wouldn’t remember that.”

“He shouldn’t.” Jordan talks without taking his eyes off Martin. Slowly, he inches into the room and walks sideways until he’s by Seto. Martin suddenly realizes that they’re between him and his wings. “But he’s an angel-”

“Move,” he growls, for now putting the magic use to the back burner. Jordan tenses, reaching for his back pocket. Slowly, Martin starts to stand. “You get away from my wings right now, you filthy fucking _worms_ -”

And he hits his head on the ceiling. Yelping, he collapses, hand shooting up to hold the ache on the top of his head. Jordan mostly looks startled, but there’s a bizarre amused confusion clear in his eyes. Seto makes a weird noise and covers his mouth, shoulders shaking with laughter. Jordan grabs him by the elbow and hauls him out before Martin can think to attack them.

They move to hover by the kitchen door. Seto ducks around Jordan’s arm, casts Martin one more glance, then leaves with the promise of food. Silence settles over the living room.

Martin doesn’t even bother to try and use his magic. He looks away from Jordan and crawls towards the wings, grabbing two of the feathers. He drags the heap of metal towards him, ignoring how it scratches the floorboards. There’s the sound of footsteps and he looks up to find Jordan leaving.

With a slight shake to his hands, Martin checks over the wings. Bent and  _burnt_ , metal warped and ugly and weak. He shakes his head, slowly, then faster and he grabs for more pieces. Part of the wrist of the left wing groans, and there’s a snap, and a few wires fray away. Feathers start clanking to the ground.

He howls in rage and slams a fist onto the floorboard, ignoring the shout of alarm from the kitchen. Martin stares at the wings in dismay, too preoccupied to notice the two humans in the doorway.

He’s flightless.

He’s flightless, trapped on the ground, injured, and without the right tools to help him escape.

He might as well be dead.

Then, suddenly, Seto mutters, “Are you- Are you hungry?”

Martin pins him down with a glare and holds back surprise when the human still offers out the food. The plate is piled with three sandwiches, all of which are cheese. The angel’s glare moves from Seto to the plate. He sneers, and hisses, “Is it poisoned? What, are you going to kill me like a coward? That’s all you humans are.”

Seto grits his teeth and holds out the food again. When Martin doesn’t take it, he sets it on the coffee table nearby. Martin doesn’t look away from him, orange eyes practically glowing with embarrassment and anger. “Some dirty maggot,” he growls, “Trying to feed _me_ , as if you think food will make me happy and placid. You pathetic human, nothing you do will-”

“I could have let Jordan kill you.” It’s so sudden that Martin jerks back, realizing he’d been leaning forward during his rant. His grip tightens on the feather in his hand. “But I didn’t.” Seto stomps towards him- He has the audacity to approachand speak and make eye contact-

The human grabs a small pole from the pile of scrap and points it at Martin, a certain type of fury scrunching his brow together. " _Don’t_ make me think it was a mistake.”

Something lingers on the kid’s tone as if he’s about to add something. But he doesn’t.

Martin, shocked into silence, wisely closes his mouth. He looks away, and after a moment, awkward silence settles.

Clearing his throat, Seto shifts his feet. His arm drops and, after a moment, he gently sets the pipe down on the floor. There’s another too-long moment, then he says, “If you- Y’know, if you need anything, just... Tell me or my brother.”

“... Get out of my sight.”

A moment passes, then there are quiet footsteps, and then he’s alone in the living room. He takes a moment to stare dumbly at nothing in particular — a vase, full of a dead plant, shoved into a corner — and then he huffs something that’s almost a snort of amusement.

He isn’t even sure these _are_ humans. They’re nothing like he’s ever met. And after a long beat of silence, he lets out a sigh and glances back at his wings. “God damn it,” he mutters and rubs at his eyes.

It’s hopeless. There’s no way he could fix them. Not without his blacksmith back in the Aether. He’s grounded, and injured, and-

A thunk startles him from his moping and he looks up to find Jordan standing there, a toolbox sitting on the floor in front of him. “The sooner you get out of here, the sooner we’re out of danger. You can fix your wings, right?”

Martin glances at the toolbox, then over to his wings. He works a lie up and says, “It might be possible.”

Jordan’s expression hardens. “Then get to it.”

“Do not. Speak to me like that.” He has _had it_ with these disrespectful, idiot brothers. And with a sudden burst of energy, he’s standing up, suddenly towering a good four feet over the human. He has to hunch over so he doesn’t hit his head. Jordan quickly backs up, eyes growing wide. “Just remember you’re at the bottom of the chain, human. I have been pleasant up until this point, _do not_ push me. Got it?”

Jordan works for something to say, eyes still staring up at him, wide and _terrified_ and Martin sneers at him with too-sharp teeth. It is too easy to scare this one, he realizes. The other one is going to be tricky, but then again, it’s only a human.

“Got it,” Jordan croaks, and quickly retreats further into the house.

The moment he’s out of sight, Martin collapses back down with a gasp, drawing in a stuttering breath and holding at his stomach. He lifts his hand, scowling at the blue-tinted bandages. He needs to be careful.

After a moment of regaining his breath, he reaches over and drags the toolbox towards him. Opening it reveals the basic sort of equipment. A hammer, wrenches, pliers. A small saw catches his eye and he picks it up, pressing the metal between his thumb and two of his fingers. It bends easily, without even a creak, and he sighs, shaking his head and tossing it back at the box.

None of this would help. It wouldn’t even put a dent in his wings...

Martin’s gaze drags back to the pair, looking over the warped metal. Perhaps, if he had better tools, he could wait for his magic to work. Then it would just be a simple fix and- No, no that was wishful thinking. Magic doesn’t flow down on the Ground, not like up in the islands, back home.

Drumming his fingers on the wooden floor as he thinks, he eventually sighs. Martin glances back towards the kitchen, then slowly leans over and pulls a wing towards him. “First thing’s first,” he mutters to himself, “Assess the damage.”

It’s almost as if he’s a fledgling again, trying to scrape together the supplies to make his own wings. He and his brother hadn’t had the money to commission wings, so they’d learned how to make them on their own. They had relied mostly on trial and error.

The thought of his brother puts a sour taste in his mouth and he grimaces, taking his hand off the wrist joint of the wing so he doesn’t hurt it more in his anger. After taking a moment to breathe and _forget_ , he gently starts prying it open.

The left wing is bent and twisted. There’s a clear mark near the wrist of it where he- He must have been hit by lightning, for the metal to be so warped and burned. It would explain why his magic still won’t respond, either. (He checks that, quickly, trying to make a feather flatten out. It doesn’t budge.)

He’d only been struck by lightning once before, but it had only taken a few days rest and then he had been back on his feet, magic following shortly after. Martin still carries the scars on his shoulder. But that was then and this is _now._ With a shake, he carefully starts to spread the wing out on the ground.

Many of the feathers are falling out, half of them already scattered across the floor. He pulls those into a pile and goes about sorting through them, putting them in order, primaries to secondaries. Checking over where they connect, he realizes that most of them were probably loosened from the lightning strike. But he’s also missing a handful of the feathers, probably scattered out across the surrounding area.

The thought of having to go out into the Ground world and searching for the rest of them makes his stomach sink. It’s necessary; there won’t be any materials that could replace the feathers. None that he could get his hands on down here, anyway.

There’s a sudden sound behind him, a clearing of a throat, and he turns around. Seto is standing in the doorway, looking just a tad more nervous than he had previously. Martin naturally forms a scowl and snaps, “What.”

“... Do you want any coffee?”

“Coffee.”

“Jordan made some a few hours ago. It’s still hot, so...”

Martin glances past him and into the kitchen, trying to pick up any sort of noise that would give Jordan’s position away. “Is it drugged?”

“Uh- No, it’s not.” Seto shifts on his feet, drawing Martin’s attention again.

“Where’s the other one? Your brother.”

Seto glances over his shoulder, then back to Martin. “Not in the kitchen, if that’s what you’re asking.” But then there's a quiet clink of a glass and Martin sneers at him.

It's possible that the kitchen connects to the hallway over to his left. He can only guess there are bedrooms past that. He needs to figure out the layout of the house.

Finally, after a long moment of thought, he grunts out, “Three spoonfuls of sugar in it, no cream.”

Seto pauses, then nods and turns back into the kitchen. Martin doesn’t move for a moment, trying to listen and see if Jordan is still in there. If he is, they don’t say anything to each other.

But Jordan _can_ use magic- From what Martin saw it must be biological or medicinal. His old friend, Baki, would know. “But Baki’s not here,” he growls and plucks at frayed wires and strings. His magic isn’t strong enough for him to move any of the metal, but he can still _feel_ it. The ringing it gives off is hollow, silent to the physical ear, but he can hear it all the same. Unhealthy. Weakened.

Seto keeps his footsteps heavy, so Martin turns back around before the human can take him by surprise again. He cautiously comes over, keeping clear of any metal pieces on the ground. Martin snatches the mug away from him without so much as a ‘Thanks’. He sniffs it, tilting it back and forth, trying to catch a glimpse of any sort of magic. It should shimmer if there is any.

After a moment, he takes a sip.

Alright, so yeah, the coffee’s alright. It’s not the best he’s had, but it’s one of the few things on the Ground that actually holds much flavor. Everything else is bland and tasteless.

Seto backs away and suddenly says, “You really should eat. I could microwave those for you if they’re too cold...”

Martin glances away from the drink and towards the plate of sandwiches. He huffs, “No,” and turns slightly, ending the conversation there. These damn humans talk too much. With a sigh, he reminds himself that he’s still on the Ground. Of course, the humans aren’t trained properly— They’re _humans_. It’s a miracle they’re smart enough to even talk in the first place.

Seto seems to take the hint; he leaves quickly, without another word.

Martin drinks down the rest of the coffee, figuring it’s all or nothing, and then grabs at the right wing. The left is obviously worse, but the right one- This is what had messed up in the first place. He looks over it, finding similar injuries like on the left, but fewer and with less severity, and then right there, in the wrist joint, is a shard of glass.

It’s large, about as big as his hand, and there's a support wire going through it. He grips it and tries to pull it out, only to find that the edge of it is caught in the mechanism. He sighs and leans back, reaching for the toolbox. After getting a pair of pliers, he goes back at the glass. Carefully, he removes it.

And then the cause of his problem is sitting in his hand. He frowns at the glass, tilting it back and forth. This is what jammed his wing to begin with. It managed to slide right in between two gears, keeping him from opening it fully, keeping his magic from connecting throughout the wing...

Anger bubbles inside him. With a snarl, Martin hurls the shard away. It shatters against the wall.

At that moment, Martin decides he’s tired. He’s still healing; he still needs to rest. So he worms his way back onto the mattresses, shifting so that he’s laying in the most comfortable position, considering his injuries. With a huff, he crosses his arms, and shuts his eyes, and ignores the humans when they peer in to see what the noise had been about.

Sleep doesn’t come easy. Every creak in the house puts him on edge, every noise outside makes him jerk into awareness, ready to fight for his life. The humans stay well away from the living room, but he still hears them moving about. After a long while of sitting there listening, he figures out that there is, in fact, a downstairs. From what he can tell, there is no attic.

A few hours into his ‘sleep’, noises start up in the room next to him. He jerks upwards with a hiss, tensing and reaching for- The hammer from the toolbox is the closest thing he can grab.

But after a moment of the noises continuing, his panic gives way to confusion. What in _hell_ could that even be?

After a long moment of debate, Martin eventually settles back onto the mattresses, turning onto his side to give the ports on his back a rest from lying on them. He shoves one hand under the pillow, with the other resting in front of his face. The hammer stays tucked to his stomach.

Just when he’s falling asleep, someone is saying his name. With a groan, Martin peels open his eyes and glares daggers over at Jordan. “I need to check on your injuries-”

“I’m fine,” he grunts and subtly lays his hand over the hammer. The human shifts nervously, and says his name again loudly when he closes his eyes.

“You won’t be fine if you don’t let me do my job. Come on, just- Sit up, and-”

He growls, a sharp noise that humans couldn’t make naturally, and it shuts Jordan up. After a moment of contemplation, he grips at the bandages around his middle and slowly lifts himself up. Jordan’s still standing there like a lemon, one hand gripping tight on the small box of medical supplies and the other holding a bowl. When Martin finally slides over to the edge of the mattress, he sets the supplies down and pulls on gloves.

Jordan carefully removes the bandages. Martin hisses at one point when they stick and he has to dig his nails into his knee to resist the urge to lash out. The sooner he’s better, the sooner he’s out of there.

The thought occurs to him that he could probably just kill these two and be done with it. But then again — and he clenches his teeth at the thought — he might need them. They could get him things he needs, and if he makes them trust him...

“Well, I don’t see any sign of infection, so you’re lucky. You need to stop moving around so much, or you’ll tear the stitches.” Jordan continues on, mumbling mostly to himself. He tries to start cleaning the wounds, only for Martin to snatch the cloth from him and do it himself.

In the silence of the living room, he’s reminded of the times he and his brother had to patch each other up. But Nitram is the cause of the problem, and he isn’t here right now, and- He winces when he presses down on a gash too hard. Jordan shifts, as if to reach out and take the cloth, but Martin pins him with a glare.

After a moment, he realizes his mistake. With a heavy sigh, he tosses the rag at Jordan, turning slightly so the human can reach his back. An awkward silence settles, and then the gentle dabbing of the cloth on his skin resumes.

“You really should eat,” Jordan says after a moment, to break the quiet. Martin grunts, and shifts so that the gears in the ports move and twist. This gives the human pause, but he continues, “You won’t get better if you starve. And I want you _gone_.”

“The feeling is mutual,” he says, and there’s another lapse in conversation. Then, giving in to his curiosity, he says, “There were noises earlier. What were they?”

“Noises? Uh...” Jordan pauses, thinking. Martin resists the urge to strangle him for taking so long. Then he says, “Oh, did you mean the TV? I was checking the news to see if your whole... thing got caught or not. From what I saw, nobody’s the wiser, so I think we’re good on that-”

Martin tunes him out again, lifting his arm when Jordan needs to wrap the bandages again. He’s been to the ground very few times, with the last time being a handful of- Years, maybe decades ago. He can’t remember. It doesn’t matter.

Eventually, Jordan tapes the last piece together and stands. There’s a moment where it seems like he’s going to say something, but Martin glares at him and he keeps his mouth shut.

Once the human leaves, Martin sighs and slumps back onto the mattress, drawing in a ragged breath. He winces at the pain searing through his torso and stretches as much as he can, feet leaving the bed. Fully laying down, he’s a good three to four feet longer than the bed. It pisses him off to no end; his feet are constantly hanging off the edge.

But he yawns anyway, pulls up the measly blanket they gave him, and tries to rest.

... He hadn’t realized it immediately, but in the dark and quiet, he notices how the constant push-pull of the ground that he’s used to is just- Gone. He isn’t up in the sky anymore. He isn’t on the islands.

He’s grounded, quite literally.

Martin groans to himself, bitter at the fact that he’s back on this train of thought. Everything is just a constant cycle of the same hopelessness. He’s sick of it, and he’s only been awake for a day.

He shifts into a more comfortable position, ignoring the way the pots press painfully against his bones. Normally, he’d be sleeping on his stomach. But the front of him took the most damage, between his brother’s wingblades and the fall. His left hand is still tingling from the lightning strike. While being struck by lightning is normally just shrugged off, he finds it concerning. That, with the other injuries, gives him cause for worry.

He decides to ignore it for now, and try to rest.

He lays there for— a good four hours. There’s a clock somewhere in the house, a few rooms away, and once everything settles with the night, the ticking makes itself known. From his counting, it’s a few seconds later than it should be.

With a sigh, he brings a hand up and pinches the bridge of his nose, rubbing an eye with his thumb. His head is throbbing dully, centered right in the middle of his skull. Sleep won’t come easily. It just _won’t_.

“God damn it, Nitram,” he mutters to the dark, “You bastard.”

Then there’s a noise in the kitchen, and the sound of a fridge opening, and light washes in through the doorway. Martin jerks up, hissing at the pain, and sits silently. Waiting, listening.

Ice clinks into a glass, and then the tap turns on. There’s the soft sound of footsteps — It’s Seto. Jordan is heavier, and Martin’s only seen him wear shoes. While he doubts the human would wear shoes at night, he knows for a fact that Seto wears socks.

Then, a pause. He hears Seto take a drink, and can almost hear him thinking. Finally, the light from the fridge slides away, only to be replaced by the harsh glow of a flashlight. It turns reddish when Seto covers it with his fingers.

Martin meets Seto’s gaze when he peers around the corner. The human startles, nearly dropping the phone in his hand. “Sorry, I- Uh, I thought you were asleep.”

“No, you didn’t.”

He knows his eyes are glowing, and he shoves as much magic into the glow as he can. Orange light outshines the harsh blue from Seto’s phone. There’s a moment of pause, then, “Do all your eyes glow like that?”

Martin huffs a sigh and the light from his eyes falters slightly, dropping back to the natural soft glow. He glances away for a moment, then grunts, “Wouldn’t you like to know?”

“I would.” Maybe the kid’s just stupid. Martin glares at him.

Seto hesitates, then asks, “Are you thirsty? I can get you some water if you want.”

He is thirsty, but he won’t admit to it. Won’t _ask_ a human for help. Shouldn’t need to. Humans should know what to do already, and Martin won’t stand to be around untrained humans.

Seto seems to realize this on some level, so he sets the glass down on the coffee table that had been shoved to the side. He places the phone flashlight-up so the room is illuminated. Martin squints against the artificial light and listens as Seto makes another glass of water.

This- This is natural. A human doing something for him because the human knows to do it. This is better than the awkward interactions where they just- Don’t seem to know how to behave. Martin makes a mental note to try and train them so they act as humans should.

Seto returns to give him the water, and Martin takes it without a word. After a moment, Seto says, “Who- Who’s Nitram?”

He skews the pronunciation so horribly that Martin has to bite his tongue to correct him. It shouldn't even bother him, but it does. But he might as well amuse the kid. “My brother.”

Seto pauses, takes a drink, and then eventually sits down against the coffee table. Martin is taller than him like this, so he doesn’t complain. “I... didn’t know you guys could, uh, have-”

“Family?”

At his silence, Martin knows he’s right. “We aren't made in shops, human. We are flesh and bone, just like you.”

Seto shrugs. “Could’ve fooled me.” But unlike Jordan, he doesn’t let silence settle. “What happened to him?”

“More like what _he_ did to me,” Martin bites out before realizing he’s probably giving too much away. But then again, it’s not as if Seto will ever _meet_ Nitram. “... We have duels, up in the Islands. Many are to the death, unless someone submits. Even then, the victor decides if they live or not.”

Seto’s eyes are wide. “Did you- You and Nitram fight? You said he was your brother?”

“Blood means little when there is a challenge.” He says this, but he still feels his chest twinge at the thought of Nitram above him, wings wide, and cyan blood splattered across him. They had been _brothers_ -

“What’s it like up there?”

The question takes him by surprise; perhaps Seto is more intuitive than he lets on, to have changed the topic like that.

“Cold,” is Martin’s response. He glares at Seto, glancing over the human. “Cold, and bright. There are certain types of plants up there, that are bioluminescent. Even in the night, it is always bright. There is very little need for that- That ugly, artificial light.” He nods towards the phone. Seto glances at it and puts a hand over the light.

The room is washed in darkness, except for the glow of Martin’s eyes, only broken when he blinks. After a moment of thought, he says, “Why.” And it is more of a demand, than a question.

Seto knows what he’s asking, but he still says, “Why what?”

Martin levels another hooded glare at him and the human caves. He hikes his shoulders up, looks away, and even in the dim light, Martin can tell that he’s working for something to say. Finally, he sighs, “Because- Because I knew we could help. And- And not _all_ of you can be...” He trails off, silent for a moment.

“Can be what?” He shifts so that he’s leaning forward, and in the light, he knows he looks dangerous. He snarls, teeth gleaming, and he growls, “Can be what, human? Bad? Not all of us can be murderers? Monsters?”

“Yes,” Seto says, and the conviction in his voice startles Martin. “It’s just like how not all of us are bad. You guys- You can’t all be evil.”

Martin draws a breath, anger boiling in his gut, and whispers, " _That_. Is where you are wrong.”

They both know the conversation is over. Seto grabs his phone, pockets it, and then stands. He almost forgets his water on the way out. Martin huffs in annoyance, downs the rest of his drink, crunches the ice, and then lays back down on his bed.

Finally, sleep comes.

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> believe it or not, i will eventually end a chapter that doesnt involve martin passing the fuck out. just... wait a bit.


	3. claustrophobia

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> a nightmare. a moment of peace. an escape.

Human food is utterly disgusting.

After another few days, when it's obvious that he won't be going anywhere anytime soon, he begrudgingly accepts whatever they give him. Thank god it isn't the slimy cheese sandwiches Seto first tried to feed him. It's stew, but it all tastes the same.

Jordan and Seto gather their own bowls and leave to eat separately. Martin is starting to think their relationship might be strained. From the stress of his crash-land, or maybe from other problems before Martin arrived. Either way, it is annoying.

He glares down at the bowl in his hand. It's small, and the second serving he's had. They left the pot on the coffee table. He should probably just eat from that, but he does have  _some_  sort of pride left. 

Martin sniffs and downs the rest of it in one go, then sets it on the table next to the pot. Scooting across the mattress, he drags one wing over to him. Runs a hand over the arm of it. He grips at the metal bones, testing their strength. None of them are cracked or broken, thank whatever god out there. If they were, there would just be no way to get off the Ground.

And he needs to  _leave_. These humans are going to be the death of him.

Jordan stays wary of him, always keeping his distance unless he has to. Seto, on the other hand-

Speak of the devil and he doth appear; the human is standing in the hallway entrance, holding a feather. "So I went out into the woods today, near where you crashed. I found this, and it actually looks to be in an alright shape." He holds it out, far enough away that Martin wouldn't be able to reach him, but close enough for the angel to grab the feather. He quickly does so and wipes the oily fingerprints off where Seto had held it. Disgusting.

Without another word, Martin turns away, examining the feather. It's a secondary, one of the larger ones, and goes on the left wing. There are only three feathers missing from the right one, with the majority of the left wing loose or already detached. He'll need to weld them back into place. 

He can feel eyes on his back. 

“So, you’re  _not_  born with those?”

“For the last—  _No_ , we aren’t,” Martin snaps, frustrated enough to pinch a metal clip into place. He sighs through his nose, not looking over at Seto. Sure, the kid’s sort of useful; he’s managed to talk Jordan into buying more heavy duty tools, and has been an endless supply of ‘Can I get you anything.’s.

But, god, is he annoying.

Once the initial both-of-us-could-kill-the-other-but-for-now-let’s-call-a-truce atmosphere had been hurdled, Seto just-

 _Gods_.

The kid never runs out of things to question him about. The islands, the plant life, the other angels, how wings are made, how islands are made, so angels actually have families and siblings and parents? What about grandparents? How long do you guys live? How old is Martin? How old is the Above? Does Martin know where the islands came from? Do they have any sort of religious practices?

It’s around the tenth question that Martin tunes him out. It’s nearing the fortieth when he finally snaps, “Shut the  _fuck_  up for once, human, or I will bite your jugular out and use it as a wire for my wings.”

It’s at that moment that Jordan decides to walk in, and it’s at that moment that Jordan decides to draw the puny butter knife against Martin.

Grumbling, Martin opts to ignore the both of them, and shifts uncomfortably on the floor. Seto is across the room, safely sitting on the armrest of the couch, and now trying to coax Jordan out of the room by saying, “I was bothering him, Jordy, go back to your homework.”

“You have school, too,” Jordan says, and Seto kicks his feet against the side of the couch.

“No, it’s summertime,  _you’re_ the one who’s taking year-long classes.”

School, classes, homework- Human words that Martin filters over and files away for later. He’d be damned if  _he_  started asking questions.

As Jordan and Seto talk, he glances over for a quick moment. Seto’s standing up, now, and he has his arms crossed. Jordan seems just as closed-off. His earlier suspicion had been right; something was off between the two of them.

Then again, he only has his own relationship with Nitram to go off of...

Martin closes his eyes for a moment, then looks back at his wings, and continues to tap a feather back into place. This hammer is sturdier than it initially seemed, and it has become his favorite thing to have near him. Constantly. Because a solid blow with a hammer to the temple could definitely kill a human.

Martin casts another sideways look to Seto and Jordan. The older is the one with the magic, so he’d be the first to go if Martin so chose to kill them. He’s tempted, he can’t say he’s not. But for now, he needs them.

The two of them finish whatever conversation they’re having and Seto leaves. Jordan turns and says with a sigh, “You know the deal.”

Martin huffs and straightens, tucking the hammer between the mattress and his leg. Reaching to unwind the bandages, he keeps one eye on Jordan. He’s healing quicker than the human expects, he knows that, but he also knows that if he were to seem fully okay, they would be much more wary of him.

And he can’t have that if he needs them to trust him.

 _Fuck_ , he needs humans to  _trust_  him. He’s damned, he is.

Jordan goes about prodding at his ribs, asking how he’s feeling, and Martin gives his usual, clipped answers, tries to seem more wounded than he is, winces more than he should.

But then Jordan says, “You’ve got this- Stump here, at the base of your spine. I hope that’s normal? It looks old, and I wasn’t going to address it, but I have to make sure.”

Martin freezes, tenses, and for a second he remembers the phantom-feeling of his old tail. Then he huffs, as if it’s nothing, and says, “It’s old, we all cut the tail off when we start flying.”

From the doorway, Seto makes a confused grunt. “Don’t you need a counter-balance?”

God damn it, of course, he gets the one human that seems to know anything about flying and angels in general. That’s saying something.

So he reaches over and almost pulls a piece of his wing to him using magic. Then he remembers that they don’t think he can use magic at the moment, so he points and says, “Pull that over to me.”

Jordan hesitates.

“It isn’t fucking connected, idiot, just give me the damn piece of scrap.”

Martin watches as the older brother hurries to pull it over. Thank god he got the right one. “This is our counter-balance,” he says, and lifts the trail of the wing, ignoring how the skeleton of the wing lifts with it. “There are a few different types, but I prefer the ones that stay closer to the body.”

Easier to defend in battle. These wings are his fighting set, after all. The counter-balances on this set are shorter, but heavier, fitted so that they lay near his legs, and are the closest set of feathers. Closer to the arm of the wing, they connect the webbing to the portlines along his back.

He doesn’t explain this. He’s tempted — his whole life revolves around making wings, and he’s damn proud of it — but these are humans. And he shouldn’t, less they go and blab about it to- To the soldiers. He isn’t sure what they have for the equivalent of Generals.

Seto makes a, “Huh” noise and finally leaves for good. Jordan goes back to dressing his healing wounds.

After a moment, Jordan says, “I know your magic is working. I can feel it.”

“That’s nice. You want me to crush your head in?”

The human falls silent. Then as he’s standing up and leaving, he says, “Just fix your damn wings and get out of my house.”

Martin scoffs, rolls his eyes, and with a jerk of his magic, the counter-balance piece slips back down to the ground without him touching it. It glides across the floor, then settles where it had been laying prior to being moved.

He sits there for a moment, listening to Jordan descend the stairs.

Then he picks up his hammer, snaps a feather into his grip, and leans over his wings. Magic twists through his hands, there’s a flash, and the feather seals itself to his wing. He passes his palm over it, flattens it, and then heaves a gasp as his magic gives. The feather rattles and bends back, further, curling, and with a frustrated shout, he snaps his hand away.

The magic on the ground is different.

God damn it, of course, it is. It flows differently, it’s almost _nonexistent_. The fact that any human has any magic at  _all_ is terrifying and disgusting. Magic should not be used by such filth. Not when an angel can’t even utilize what’s there.

Brewing in his own anger and self-pity, Martin folds the left wing up and pulls the right one towards him. He’ll start small. Strengthen the wires, make sure the gears turn, make sure the springs coil. He’ll get through this.

He’ll get through this, and then he will go and kill Nitram.

[...]

After a few more days, when Jordan leaves to go to his classes, Martin finally decides it's about time to see how their house is laid out.

So with difficulty, he gets to his feet using the shelf nailed to the wall. Something falls off of it; he doesn't bother to look and see what it is. He glances around for a second. With a huff, he goes to the kitchen. He has to hunch over awkwardly. The ceilings are a foot or so too short for him, and the doorways even worse. 

The kitchen is plain, with a small folding table near the door to the outside. There's another door that's ajar, leading down to the basement. Martin hobbles his way over to the fridge and pulls out a packet of mixed greens. Eating as he walks, he starts exploring the hallway. He's already determined Jordan's room is across the hall from the living room, but just out of sight from where Martin usually lays.

He peers into it for a moment, orange eyes flicking around how neat and tidy it is. Clean freak, that one. He'd be good to have up on the island. Martin  _does_ need a new maid, after all.

The next door is a bathroom. He has to wrinkle his nose at it, has to gag at the thought, and is thankful that his organs are nothing like humans'. God forbid he start crapping everywhere like they do.

Though he  _does_ need to bathe. He's tired of sponge baths with cold water. Soaking in a bath sounds great.

But with a sigh, Martin continues on, glancing into the room that's next to the living area. There's a weird black box near the wall, and then a desk. It's easily smaller than the bathroom, probably used as an office. The box must be the TV Jordan was talking about. After that room is a small hallway closet, full of boxes and bags. He doesn't bother investigating that. 

To his left, though, are a set of stairs. He hasn't heard the two of them upstairs, hadn't even known there  _is_ an attic. Martin leans near to the wall, trying to see up into the hallway. In his current condition, stairs are a bad idea. So he'll have to explore up there later. There must be a reason for the brothers' avoidance of the place.

Content with his exploration, he limps his way back to the living room and halts in the doorway when he sees Seto by his wings. The human isn't touching, just looking, but a growl rips through Martin's throat anyway. Seto jumps and spins around, eyes wide. "S-Sorry, I was just... looking."

"Get away from them."

Seto nods quickly and shuffles away, towards the couch and the doorway to the kitchen. The two of them keep each other in their sights. Martin slowly makes his way to the mattress, sitting down with a huff of pain. 

"... What do you need to fix them?"

"Time, and a welder, and magic." He only has one of those things. Seto doesn't point that out, but they both know it. "Well... I don't really know how much a welder is, but I'm sure I could find you something."

Martin thinks about this for a moment, then gives a sharp nod and looks back at his wings. He wishes he had his blacksmith. He wishes he wasn't here, to begin with.

But nothing goes right for him.

There's an awkward cough and he sees Seto leave out of the corner of his eye.

So Martin sits, alone, staring at the wreckage of his wings.

[...]

Four or five nights later, Martin is awoken by a shriek. He bolts upright, tense, magic flaring for a moment and lighting the room with orange. He glances towards the doorway when he hears Jordan hurrying past. There's another scream from the basement, and Martin frowns when he realizes it's Seto.

The basement door opens and closes, then the screaming stops. He hears a hushed conversation. With a huff, Martin lays back down and turns on his side.

After a while, Jordan goes back to his room, pausing to look into the living area. He must assume that Martin is asleep because he leaves without a word.

So now Martin is wide awake, with only the ticking clock to keep him company. His thoughts stray to Nitram. To cold nights, sheltered in some tree, huddling together for warmth. Without wings, without a home. Only each other-

"I know you're awake." 

Martin's eyes fly open and he twists around to find Seto slumped on the couch. He hadn't even heard the human come in. He quickly sits up, glaring. "What do you want."

Seto looks at him, and god damn it the kid looks older than he is. Martin squints at him. After a moment, the human shrugs and looks away, hugging his arms. "Sorry for waking you up."

"It doesn't matter."

Silence settles for a while.

Then, quietly, Seto says, "I've met one of you before."

Martin looks at him in surprise but hides it with disinterest. "Yeah? That's great, kiddo, so have I."

Seto doesn't look at him. The silence lulls, too loud, and Martin clears his throat and asks, "You know their name?"

"... I don't think you'd know him." So that was a yes, then.

"He still alive?"

Seto nods, eyes distant. There are heavy bags under his eyes. He hesitates, then mutters, "You're not like him at all. I just- I don't think you would... You're not like him."

Martin sneers at him and looks away, but tucks this to the back of his mind to think about later, when it isn't 5:43 in the morning. He growls, "Go away, human."

Seto slinks out of the couch and leaves without another word.

[...]

As another week rolls over, belly-up like a dead fish, and he only manages to make sure most of the wires won't snap, he's starting to realize he might be on the Ground for a long, long time. After that last conversation after Seto's night terror, Martin is a bit more willing to give him the time of day. He still hates the human, but there's nothing else for him to talk with, and he's stuck down here anyway. 

Seto starts talking to him at night. More often than not, the kid comes around near three in the morning. The both of them can't ever seem to sleep. And the kid will talk about nothing. It's an okay distraction. 

"So you don't have any sort of internet? You're missing out, you know. I think you would be much less grumpy if you could vent all that pent-up anger out on some cringy blogger, or-"

"I have no idea what you're saying, human." Martin isn't doing anything. Isn't trying to sleep, isn't trying to fix his wings. He's laying there, staring at the ceiling, tracing patterns in the weird texture of the paint, and listening to Seto's heartbeat slow or pick up whenever he talks.

Seto is sitting in his usual spot, on the couch across the room. He doesn't dare get closer. Martin is, at least, thankful for that. The human sighs and raises his glass of ice water and takes a long drink. He sets it back on the coffee table and stares into the dark. He never turns the flashlight on anymore. Thank god. "Alright, well... Here, wait here, I'll be right back." Like a spring coiled, Seto shoves himself off the couch and races to the hallway. Martin glances over as he passes, tempted to trip him, but decides against it. He would land on the metal pieces and he doesn't feel like cleaning blood off of them.

The human returns a few moments later, holding a flat, awkward-looking... book. Martin glares at it and finally sits up. His back and ribs ache, but he's healing well and the tingling has left his arm.

Seto pauses, then sits down on the floor in front of the coffee table. With the way all the furniture is pushed to the side, his back is to Martin. It would be so easy to grab him by the nape and rip his spine out...

He pulls the metal-book apart and bright, artificial light suddenly washes across the room. Martin hisses as his night vision is messed up and he looks away, shielding his eyes. "What the fuck, human, I-"

"Here, sorry. I had the brightness up. Let me just- There. You can look now."

He does so, but cautiously. Somehow, the human managed to turn the light from the harsh-blue to a softer, almost yellowish color. Martin squints at the- He doesn't even  _know_ what it could be. He isn't about to ask, either, lest he damage his pride.

Thankfully, Seto says, "It's a laptop. Uh, you can like. Type and watch things. I mean, there's more to it than that, but I guess that's the basic functions. This is the laptop Jordan got me a few years ago, so it's kinda slow."

So, it's mechanical. Fascinating. Martin leans forward, squinting at the buttons Seto is typing on. When he stretches out his magic, the metal parts of the laptop sing in a shrill, whining voice. He flinches back and rubs at his ears. The human doesn't bother to turn around, eyes fixated on the screen-light. "Here, look at this." With a tap to a square in front of the buttons, the screen blinks and then starts moving. 

Martin is then staring at the sky.

Clouds are rolling, interrupting the view of an island of the Above. The screen zooms in closer to the island, and he can see distant, bird-like shapes-

He scrambles forward, elbows Seto out of the way, and grabs the laptop. Turns it around, looks at the bottom of it, then lets it drop back to the coffee table. "What-"

"It's a video." Seto isn't laughing at him, thank god, but there's obvious amusement in his tone. "I didn't know what to show you first, but... This is the biggest island that's been over us so far. Well, I mean, as far as I've seen-"

"That's one of the Generals' islands," he says, breathlessly, and leans towards the screen. "I recognize the runes on the bottom- See those, there? Etched into the sides? That's- God, that's one of  _Junys'_  islands."

"Junys?"

Martin flinches at the mispronunciation and glances at Seto, remembering where he is. And realizing that he is awfully, awfully close to the human. Martin leans away, then goes back to sit on the mattress. "Yeah," he says, curtly, and Seto seems to realize that's about all he's going to get.

"Huh," he says, and Martin is becoming convinced that that is Seto's favorite noise. The angel sighs and glances away, eyes hurting from the harsh light. After a moment, though, he looks back. "A video, is what you called this?"

"Yeah. There's a lot of them. Not all are of the islands, of course. There're animal videos, movies, TV shows-"

"TV. Your brother said something about a TV, a while ago, it is the black box in the other room."

"Yeah, we have one in the other room, and then also one downstairs." Seto pulls the laptop back to him and exits from the video of Junys' island. "Here, let me show you this one popular video."

And that's how they spend the next two hours. Martin hovering nearby, cautious but curious, and feeling incredibly stupid as Seto easily shows him the ends and outs of- Of videos and he tries to explain anything Martin questions. 

Martin knows what cameras are. He has one back at home, that makes an instant-photo, which prints from the bottom of the camera. Those were becoming increasingly popular among the Above, as they captured color and didn't take very long.

But this.

This is...

God, he felt stupid.

By the time the sun starts coming up, Seto had started yawning more than talking. He glances out the window and says, "Well, I mean I can leave you with the laptop if you want. But I'm gonna go to bed, it's like- Almost six in the morning. Night, Martin."

"Sleep take you well," Martin mutters without thinking, pulling the laptop closer. He doesn't notice Seto pause and instead starts jabbing in something to the search function.

[...]

A day or so later, there's a knock at the front door.

The front door is connected directly to the living room. Both Jordan and Seto are home. So whoever is there, is someone  _else_. Another human. 

Martin immediately scrambles to gather his wings. He doesn't know where he's going to go, just that being  _there_ is a bad idea. He hears Seto racing to get upstairs, and Jordan is already shutting his door. "Move the mattresses," Martin commands, wincing as the wingports slide rawly as he moves. God, he needs to start moving more. Sitting around will do nothing for the healing process.

"The furniture," Seto says.

"No time. Shove it more into the middle." 

Martin glances back at them as he ducks into the hallway. He knows there aren't any hiding spots on the main level. After a moment of thought, Martin quickly slinks back down the hallway and into the kitchen. There's a stitch in his side and pain is starting to throb in his bones. He quickly limps down the stairs. The door opens.

Standing at the beginning of the basement, panting, trying to control how much noise he's making, he shuffles and holds his wings closer. A lot of the feathers were loose, and they wouldn't be able to fly him anywhere. But...

The humans upstairs start making noise. Jordan is the one that's talking. He's polite and gives no indication of any nervousness, but after a moment Martin can pinpoint the waver in his voice. Almost impossible to hear to human ears, but he can easily tell the human is scared. "No, ma'am, I haven't seen anything lately."

"Are you sure? Would you let me look around? There are a few reports of an angel near these parts. From what people say, it could have crashed nearby. You are the owner of this property, correct?"

Martin breathes out a sigh of irritation. Maybe he should just go up there and wring this woman's neck. But then others would undoubtedly come looking for her, and it would cause them more trouble. He huffs a sigh, and tenses when the basement door creaks open. Seto slinks down the stairs, glancing back only once to lock the doorknob. "Follow me," he whispers, darting past Martin and further into the basement. "You gotta get out of here. I don't know if they can search the house or not, but if they find you, they'll kill you."

"Isn't that what you  _want_?"

Seto stops short and glances back at him. After a long moment, the human shakes his head. "No, it isn't. What I want is to see that you guys aren't-"

"Save it." In one fluid motion, he sets a wing down and slings another onto his back. There's a sound like a zipper closing a gap, and the webbing of the wing attaches to the port-lines. He jabs the wingjoint into the port and twists, tugs with his magic-

Then feeling arches across the wing and he jerks, spine curling, and he struggles to keep from knocking Seto over with the wing's thrashing. The kid ducks away, gasping and startled. He quickly backs further away, out of Martin's reach. "What are you  _doing_?"

"Shut up. Just- Shut the fuck up." Martin grabs his left wing, prepares himself for the pain, and locks it into place as well. It jerks, twitches and siezes erratically. He goes down on one knee, hissing, riding the waves of pain. After a moment, they subside, pulsing in time with his heartbeat. He stays there for a moment, then waves at Seto. "Go. I'll follow."

Seto glances at him for a moment, then nods and starts through the basement. Martin gets to his feet and follows. The familiar, if painful, weight of his wings on his back make him feel less vulnerable. He won't be able to fly, but he can definitely fight. They come to an old door and Seto slides the deadbolt out of the way, then unlocks the main doorknob. He glances up towards the ceiling, and that's when Martin notices that there aren't any voices, but footsteps. "Go," he hisses, and Seto shoves the door open. 

The sunlight is bright, but Martin ignores it. He shoves Seto outside and then closes the door behind them. Seto locks it, then hurries after Martin. They go to the woods. Martin glances back in time to see another car with flashing lights glide up to the house. Seto tugs on his arm and they disappear into the woods.

Martin leads the way, telling Seto to step lightly in his footsteps. He knows how to evade and escape through the woods. It's difficult; they have to make sure they don't get caught on any branches. But it's summer time and there are plenty of flat rocks to step on. The storm Martin crashed through had been the last rainfall since his arrival, so the ground is dry and they don't have to worry about mud.

"Here, keep going down the hill. There's a stream down there, we can walk through that in case they have dogs."

"That's even worse. That won't do shit if they have dogs on us. Are there any sort of rocky terrains, or-"

"This way." Again, Seto grabs his wrist. Martin's stomach curdles in disgust, but he allows it. Now isn't the time.

They go further into the woods, and eventually the downhill slope flattens out. Martin glances around, spotting the stream Seto had been talking about. He glances back up the hill, but can't see any movement. When he strains his ears, there aren't any signs of human or animal trackers. "Okay. I want you to run around here. Make it look like you'd just been fooling off. Splash in the stream if you want."

"And what will that do?"

"Confuse them." Without another word, Martin starts off again, carefully stepping across rocks that aren't submerged in the water. His side is starting to hurt, as well as the stab wound in his chest. He needs to keep going, though.

Thankfully, Seto starts doing what he'd asked. He hears him crashing around in the underbrush, and then the sounds get quieter. Martin glances back to see Seto going along their old trail, then branching off from it.

Okay, so, maybe some humans are somewhat intelligent. Somewhat.

Martin shakes his head and hurries on, grabbing his side. His wings shuffle, feather rattling, and he does his best to keep them tight to his back. Everything hurts, but the pain is nothing. Pain is nothing.

He stumbles on loose rocks and glances back, realizing he's up atop a cliff. It would be easy to just... open his wings and fly. His gaze rises to the sky. A few small islands are drifting nearby, creating big blocks of shade. As he watches, one slides in front of the sun and the temperature drops several degrees. He sighs and rolls his shoulders, then continues on.

There isn't time to enjoy the scenery. He just keeps going. Keeps crisscrossing paths, keeps following animal trails, until he's heaving for breath and he knows his stitches are tearing. "Fuck," he curses, leaning against a tree.

Continuing is impossible. He won't be able to, not with his still-healing injuries. Sure, he'd been feeling better. But that doesn't mean he should be up and running about like he is. He needs rest, damn it, and he needs his magic back.

Finally, he decides that this tree is fine. Martin slides down to sit on the moss. He pants, closing his eyes and letting his head fall back onto the bark. His wings slump to lay in the grass.

Martin takes a moment to just sit there, and breathe. His heartbeat eventually slows back to its normal pace and he opens his eyes, glancing around. He's up on what seems like a plateau, and he makes a mental note to later figure out the landscape around the house.

Out here, he can feel magic. It isn't like up in Above, but it's definitely thicker out in the natural world than it is in the humans' living room. He should start trying to fix his wings outside. It's risky; any wandering hiker or another human could come across him, but...

With a grunt, he shoves the thought away. Now isn't the time to get distracted. He needs to keep vigilant, in case they managed to tail him and find him. He isn't ready for a fight, he knows, but up against a small group of humans... He thinks he has a chance.

If he rests first, that is.

So Martin sits, and stares at the sky, and watches the islands float above him.


	4. grand optimist

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> hiking and hysteria

He sits beneath the tree for a while, eyes open as slits and listening to every bit of sound. It's good to be out of that small house, after being in there for- Damn, it's almost been two months at this point.

He's surprised it took so long for someone to come looking around...

It doesn't seem right.

Martin sits up off the tree. There's something- wrong with what had just happened. He glances back down the way he came, watching the slope. Cursing himself, he staggers to his feet. He shouldn't have left Seto alone. If the soldier-humans came looking, Seto could easily just decide to point them in his direction. He doesn't  _think_ Seto would do that, but humans can't ever be trusted. Especially untrained ones.

Uneasy, Martin starts moving again, wings mantling slightly with nerves. He keeps his pace even and makes sure to pause to rest so he doesn't overexert himself. A growing feeling in his gut is telling him that he's going to have to fight. He isn't ready for a fight.

With a snap of magic, his featherblades extend. Most of them creak and groan, but do unsheathe. A handful or so on each wing do not, however, and he scowls at the three primary featherblades that don't leave their half-hidden sheaths on the top side of his left wing. He slides the blades back in and looks back over his shoulder, pausing to listen.

Dread hardens in his stomach when he hears someone travelling across the rocky terrain. Pebbles slipping underneath feet, branches snapping- Fuck, they're close. No dogs, as far as he can tell, so that's at least a plus.

Whoever it is, they're making plenty of noise. So it could be a couple of people, or it could be bait. He doubts humans are smart enough to send one after him, since they know he would easily just kill the bait and make off with his 'feast'. 

Gritting his teeth, he looks around, and notices a rather large oak tree. It might be able to hold him- 

A branch cracks and there's a mumbled curse. No time to think.

Scaling the tree is easy. He ignores the pull of his wounds and works his wingblades into the bark. The metal creaks as it helps pull him into the branches, but he ignores it. Extending the blades, and prying those that are stuck out, he crouches and waits.

And waits.

And there, to his right, blocked by the trunk of the tree, someone stumbles out from the underbrush. He sees the vague movement and the shadow cast from the sun. Inhaling, he can smell the human stench. With cat-like grace, Martin grips onto the trunk and flings himself around it, pouncing down on whoever it is. 

He stops short, featherblades pressing against Seto's throat.

The kid didn't even get to scream, suddenly shoved to the ground. He's gasping for air, as it was probably knocked from his lungs, and instinctively reaches up to try and shove the crossed blades away from his throat. The metallic tang of blood rises into the air and Martin steps back, sliding the blades away. "Fuck, kid, do you  _want_  to die?"

Seto coughs and scrambles back, turning onto his side and holding his neck. His hand comes away bloody and for a second, Martin is afraid that he'd cut too deep.

The human finally rises to his feet, still holding his neck, and spits out, "I didn't know you'd fucking attack me! What the hell?"

"What do you  _mean_ 'What the hell'? Of course I would attack you, you idiot! You stupid humans, you don't think ahead!" He takes a step forward and Seto seems to finally realize exactly how tall Martin is. The angel is nearly twice his height, and for one second Martin finds himself bristling, wings mantling, eyes glowing violently. Seto's eyes go wide and he takes a few steps back. After a few beats of silence, Martin smooths his anger enough to settle.

"The cops are gone," Seto croaks, "I came to tell you that it's safe to go back home."

"Home," Martin spits the word like it's poison. He points to the sky, and growls. " _That_ is home, not your puny excuse for shelter. I've fucking had it with you two, you know. Not only do you not act like humans should, you think you have the right to  _talk_ to me. I don't want to hear another word from your god damn mouth, or I'll slit your throat the rest of the way."

He must have made some mistake, because suddenly Seto's frightened demeanor is swept away in a wave of anger. "Go ahead then! Just do it, and prove me wrong! I stopped Jordan from killing you. We took you in, we  _helped_ you, and now you're trying to repay that with killing me. Some honorable angel  _you_ are."

Martin scowls, stepping forward to intimidate the human, but Seto doesn't flinch. Not even when he spreads his mangled wings and forces all the magic into making his mouth and throat glow. 

The shadow of an island washes across them, and the orange light shines down on Seto. Martin growls again, sharp teeth bared, and then howls in rage when Seto still doesn't move. He turns away, paces, knowing he's lost this argument but too proud to admit it. Seto is smart, Martin has to give him that. And this side of the human - this is the one born from having dealt with an angel before.

(It almost reminds him of how Nitram would argue with him.)

(He shoulders that thought out of his mind.)

Finally, after taking a moment to stare at a weird pattern on a tree, Martin turns around. Seto isn't looking so fired and determined anymore, but there's some other emotion in his eyes. The fear is still there, but it's like cornering a scared animal. Of course an animal would lash out, of course.

So he sneers and says, "Lead the way."

Their walk back to the house is silent.

[...]

They don't take the same path home, but they also don't go directly back. Martin doesn't care, either way. Sure, he's in some pain, but it's better to be outside. Now that he's not there, he realizes that the human's house had been getting claustrophobic. 

So he delays returning as much as possible. It's easy, really, all he has to do is get Seto talking. So Martin says, "Are there any fairy rings nearby?"

He hadn't been expecting much; Seto is in a bad mood, and it's hard to get him to talk when he's like that. But the human stops short and looks back at him, hesitating. "... Why?"

So, there  _is_ one around. Interesting, usually the rings only pop up when there are magical-... "Jordan has magic, yes? Usually the rings show up around magical creatures."

Seto glances away, then back to Martin. That's when he notices it. A small, but slightly paler, fleck in one of his irises. It hasn't grown into any color, and it could easily be passed off by just the grey colors of his eyes naturally being like that, but the coincidence is too strong. "Or, the both of you?"

"I don't have magic," Seto says hurriedly, "Jordan got his when he was fourteen, and I'm sixteen. It would've shown up by now."

Martin hums and starts off in the direction Seto had glanced in. "That is strange," the angel comments, "Usually, magic takes a while into someone's lifespan to show. Unless you two are from the eastern continent, of course."

Seto barks a laugh. "We aren't that lucky."

 _We aren't that lucky_. Something similar to unease churns in Martin's gut. He briefly thinks back to Nitram, howling in pain, sawing off his tail, slicing off ears, and-

Martin huffs and shakes his head. "Nobody is, human."

"Have you ever been there? Are there even the islands in the east, or are they just over the west?" As if to chime in to his question, the shadow from an island lifts off of them, gliding away. Seto pauses in his steps and glances around for a moment, before gesturing for Martin to follow.

Martin thinks about the soft glow of the islands, and the lit paths connecting them to the ground. The pointed, curved rooftops, friendly faces and spicy food and the fireplace during winter. His brothers-

"Fuck if I know," he grunts out, and shoves away a tree a bit harder than he meant to. The sapling snaps and wilts, and Martin scowls at it. 

After a few more minutes of walking, Seto stops. Martin nearly trips over him. He stumbles back, about to snap at him, when the human turns and says, "If Jordan finds out I brought you here, he'll skin me alive. Don't tell him."

Martin laughs and pats his head and says, "Over my dead body, kid."

He continues forward, noticing the familiar prickling feeling of magic. He follows it instinctively, leaving Seto to glare after him and comb his hair back into place. Martin stops suddenly, reaching up to touch his stomach. "A warding spell?"

"He wanted it hidden," Seto says, shrugging. "If people feel too sick to keep going, they're unlikely to find it."

The feeling is something akin to having an itch he can't scratch. For a human without magic, he'd imagine it to be fairly painful. "It's a strange one," he comments, going forward and passing over whatever hidden rune must be keeping the spell going. "Up Above we usually just use fields to keep things out."

"Like force fields?" Seto hops into the large runic circle. Martin makes a mental note of where he'd avoided, for later if he wanted to look at the rune.

"Pretty much. Warding spells and force fields are different. Most of our islands have the fields. Mine does, at least." Martin stops when he reaches a stone wall. It looks fairly natural - A short cliff face, about up to his shoulders. He glances left and right and finds that one each side, it curves. "Look, kid, I'll give your brother a hint. Build the fairy ring into an actual mountain next time, he's shit at making his own."

"Yeah, well, I couldn't convince him that this looked horrible." Seto passes through the wall, obviously used to travelling here. Martin follows him, reaching up to hold a hand in front of his face in case there was something he'd run into. He hits a few branches as he passes through the illusion, and then the sun shines brightly down on him again. He glances around, nodding to himself.

Trees cover most of the inside of the illusion, naturally-growing. He sees a few stumps, carved out and smoothed down. There's a desk made from two stumps and a few boards. The others seem to be storage spaces, hollowed out and covered. There's a small ring of white, flat-topped mushrooms growing to his left; in front of him is the larger, main ring, maybe fifteen feet across. "This will do nicely," he says, almost a tad impressed that a human had the knowledge and time to make something this detailed. 

He looks over at Seto to find the human tracing something on a tree. Martin walks over, staring at the sigil. It's fairly simple, with just a few characters in its center. After a moment of squinting, he laughs. "A banishing sigil?"

Seto doesn't say anything. Martin glances down at him to find that he looks fairly upset. "We already know it doesn't work," he says quietly, hand still planted on the bark of the tree.

After a moment of staring at the crude sigil, Martin huffs and turns away, eyeing the clearing again. He notices a couple of dead logs, tipped over and blackened from fire. "Do you get bad dry seasons here?" he asks, kicking at the dead grass underfoot. Seto doesn't answer, so he gives up on investigating, and instead goes to root through Jordan's supplies. He finds the typical stuff. Candles, charcoal pencils, and a primitive wand. He picks it up, laughing to himself at it. It looks like Jordan at least  _tried_ , but it's still shit. He gives it an experimental tap against his leg, trying to summon a spark of magic to it. The most he gets is a fizz of light, then it sputters out.

He glances over to find Seto watching him. "What, never seen magic before?"

"No, it's just that Jordan carved that from a branch. He made it as a joke." Seto widens his eyes when Martin summons a few more sparks. He tries to force more magic through, drawing fro mthe environment, but the branch in his hand splinters and cracks, charred lines exploding from the base and shattering half of it. Martin curses and drops it to the ground, kicking it. "Well, it's shit. You should see the ones I have at home..."

Lost in thought, he turns and kneels next to the bench, noticing a sealed box beneath it. He pulls it out and starts rifling through it. Papers and research, mostly on medical magic. He pulls out a recipe book and stops short. "Your brother makes potions?"

"Yeah. They're... experimental."

It dawns on him that Jordan must have been slipping him sedatives during the first few days he'd been in their house. The thought angers him, but one glance at Seto and he calms his temper. Seto looks sheepish, not glancing his way. "I'm guessing drugging me wasn't your idea?"

"Not really," he admits. Martin sighs. He shoves the box back under the desk and goes to the small ring. The mushrooms tremble as he steps over them. He feels for the magic, snaking out his own roots and trying to snag at it. The Ground's magic shies from his, but he's strong, and he yanks it under his control, wrestling. It kicks and bucks and writhes, but eventually he has it snared and he draws it into himself. All the while, he just stands there, still as stone.

The moment he has more magic, the constant pains form his wounds immediately fade. He sighs and slumps slightly. Seto makes a cautious movement, a half-abandoned question about to be asked.

After a moment, Martin turns away from him, pulling up his shirt and pulling the stitches from his side. He does the same for the rest of his wounds, flicking the strings to the ground. Passing a hand over his skin, he wrestles more magic into himself and watches as bruises start to fade. The healing isn't instant; but everything is mostly closed up, mostly alright. No infection, and with the magic he'll see to it staying that way.

He turns to find Seto staring openly, mouth slightly agape. After a long moment, Martin shoves his shirt back down and says, "Human, you will not say a word. Do you understand?"

And this question - it's different. It's a command. Martin raises an eyebrow at Seto, watching as he slowly closes his mouth and nods.

Good.

"You can leave. I have work to do."

Seto raises his eyes up to Martin's. The angel doesn't hide his initial bristle, grimacing at the kid. After a moment, Seto asks, "Can all of you do that? Heal yourself that quickly?"

The silence stretches too long. Martin says, "Does it matter?"

He hesitates, then shakes his head. Without another word, he leaves, disappearing into the illusion spell. Martin listens, hearing his footsteps grow further and further away.

After a moment, Martin sighs and turns around. He goes to the main ring and sits down in the center, crossing his legs and settling his wings down on the soft grass. Closing his eyes, he takes a deep breath, lets it out, and starts on drawing in magic to make it his own.

He sits in silence for a while, wrestling with the magic. The environment seems to learn quickly; after an hour, it wilts and stops fighting, allowing him to leech off the natural flow of its magic. Martin feels it circling around, like a whirlpool, shifting with invisible currents. He weaves his snares in with it, directing the flow, forming it tighter and tighter around him.

Sweat drips down his brow. He takes in a shaking breath, releases it and then draws another, pulling magic in at the same time. When he exhales, he shoves it out, and as it crests into the whirlpool, he yanks it in, sharpening it, and he hears the ground bursting apart around him.

Not daring to open his eyes yet, less he lose concentration, he shoves outwards again, pulls in, shoves out, creates waves and currents that aren't inherently natural. The mushrooms around the circle burst, one by one, exploding and splattering. He shoves out, and snaps the reigns, imagining the magic hardening, sharpening. Metal slides against metal. He pulls his wings closer. 

By the third time he yanks and pulls again, he's trembling, gasping for air. It's been so long since he'd had to...

Martin blinks open his eyes, startled to find that he's swaying where he's at. He glances around, at the metal pikes lancing up from the earth, all pointed at him. The closest one is an inch from his nose, sharp and gleaming in the sunlight. Trembling, he pulls at it and it easily comes out from the ground, like a loose tooth that's sat in the gums for too long. He doesn't have the strength to hold onto it, so he lets it sit across his lap.

It's not his finest work, surely, but it is something. All the spikes need to be shaved down and sliced, which he'll figure out later. They're a mottled brown, since he'd pulled mostly from the earthen magic. But the metal is sharp along its jagged edges, and one resting in his lap is fairly light.

He reaches a hand out, drawing on the circle's last remains of magic, and all of the spikes tremble as he tests them. They collapse, then rattle and pile together neatly. Sighing in content, Martin finally leans back on his hands, closing his eyes.

Of course, he'd have to wait for the circle to regenerate. He needs a few dozen more of the replacement feathers to make his wings. Not to mention the other, finer workings. Gears and wire tendons. Bolts, nails, anchors. The intricacies for flight.

But for the first time since he'd crashed, Martin is... relieved.

A shaky breath, almost a laugh, escapes him. Then another and another, and then he's doubled over cackling, gasping for air and holding his side, where it's starting to hurt. When the pain spikes, he gasps down his hysteria and coughs, choking on- on a sob, on the relief of it all. 

Then a thought occurs to him that has him gasping in another fit of laughter. He slides down onto his side, disturbing the pile of freshly-grown feathers. They clatter and roll, spilling from their places. He scrambles to get his face out of the grass, scrubbing tears and dirt from his cheek. He isn't sure if he's- if he's laughing or crying, or maybe something of both.

Nitram didn't kill him.

Their duel ended in a draw.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> so honestly, im writing this because its just a fun thing to do. the pacing of the story might be a bit weird but thats because i just want to get to the second book, so. this first one is probably gonna be pretty short.


	5. coil of anxiety

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> an old photo and a new friend

Jordan seems particularly pissed off today.

Martin thinks it's because he destroyed the human's fairy ring, but it could just be because he's human. Martin would be pissed if he was human, too.

Seto claims not to know anything about mushrooms, at all. He doesn't even know what to say when Jordan shows him his phone, shows him pictures of exploded mushrooms and earth dredged up as if someone took an axe to it.

Martin drinks his coffee and types away at Seto's laptop. He glances down at the plastic card in his hand, reads over the numbers once, memorizes every detail on the front and then on the back, then slips it back into Jordan's wallet and tosses that towards the front door. 

"I swear, Jordan, I haven't even been there in a month, I don't know what happened!"

Martin sips from the mug and appreciates the too-hot liquid. They ran out of sugar so he's drinking it black, but he doesn't mind. More flavor. He types in the numbers, fingers jabbing at the black buttons on the keyboard. The laptop dings and he sits back, grinning to himself. 

"Well,  _something_ must have happened. Shit doesn't just- Explode! Like that!"

"How would I know?" Seto shrieks, and Martin lifts his head when he hears something being slammed onto the counter top in the kitchen. " _I'm_ not the one with magic!"

There's a short pause. Martin refrains from whistling, or laughing, or a combination of the two. He glances over as Jordan passes by, but the human stops short.

"Is that ebay?"

"I needed a welder," Martin says easily. Jordan pales slightly. He hurries across the living room, dodging Martin's feet where they're splayed out across the floor, and he snags his wallet from the ground. "Did you use my credit card?"

"It asked for the numbers, so." Martin takes another drink of his coffee, only to find that it's empty. With a sigh, he sets the laptop away and stands, ducking through the doorway and into the kitchen. Seto is sitting at the kitchen table, fuming, scribbling furiously in his sketchbook. An extra cog is sitting in front of him. Martin thinks the scribbles might be a sketch of it.

The angel goes about pouring another mug. Then, on second thought, he just sets the mug aside for the humans if they need it, and takes the entire pot back to the living room. Jordan is on the laptop. "Hey, that's not yours."

"It isn't yours, either."

Martin levels a glare at him. Jordan wilts after a second, then straightens. "I don't have the money to  _get_ you a welder, Martin. You can't just-"

"Then get the money."

"I- That's- That's not how it works."

He drinks from the coffee pot. It's scalding. "You will get me a welder, one way or another. I don't care how it's done."

"I have to pay bills," Jordan protests.

"You're about to be paying medical bills, if you don't get out of the room," Martin threatens, taking another drink, and walks towards the human. Jordan wisely scrambles up, throws the laptop on the mattress, and leaves in a huff.

Martin sits back down with a sigh. He pulls the laptop back towards him and goes back to the news tab. He'd been keeping a close eye on any news of angels, but so far hadn't seen anything interesting. 

After a while of piddling away time on the internet, Seto finally shows up in the living room. He stays silent for a long, long time. Martin eventually looks up to find Seto staring at him. It's a distant sort of stare, and Martin doubts he's purposefully looking at him. Still, he sneers, and says, "What are you looking at, human?"

"Your eyes aren't glowing anymore," Seto says, somewhat softly, and Martin bites back his instant defensive retort. Seto is right; his bio-luminescence is slowly dwindling, without the proper diet he'd had up Above. And without the right amount of magic...

He hikes a shoulder up in a shrug. "So what? Nothing else down here glows."

Seto looks away, down at his sketchpad. Martin straightens, catching a glimpse of the page before the human shifts, on purpose, to keep it from his view. "It's not like you're... sick or anything, right? It's just that you're-"

"Not eating right." Martin slides his gaze to the right, where he can just barely see Jordan's open door. "I'll be fine, fuck off."

Seto follows his gaze. After a moment, he stands and says, "Okay."

"Okay?"

The human shrugs and goes to the door, pulling on his shoes. "Yeah. I'm going for a walk."

The door closes behind him. Martin blinks at it for a moment, then gets up and grabs his sketchbook from the couch, as well as the pencil.

Flipping through it, Martin is... Well, he isn't  _awed_ , but he does have to admit Seto is pretty decent at drawing. Mostly from life, it looks like. On the third page is an old photo tucked in, with a drawn copy of it on the page. Martin looks over the photo and the drawning, finding finer details that could have been added. It's of some female human, with long hair roped back in braids. Seto didn't draw her eyes in, leaving that part of the picture blank. Her mouth looks as if it had been erased and drawn in again too many times. She's holding an infant.

Martin can easily put two and two together, and sighs. He doesn't remember his own mother, or his father. He only had Nitram, and...

Swallowing, he slaps the picture back down, and continues flipping through it. Surprisingly, there are a lot of sketches of wing parts. Feathers, bent and new, gears and springs, the inner workings. Then a sloppily sketched idea of what they would look like extended.

The wingspan drawing takes up half the page. Martin grabs the pencil and starts filling in his own. 

He doesn't need reference. Doesn't need to look at the mangled bits of wings laying around the living room. He's drawn up so many diagrams of wings. From commissions, to his own projects, to Nitram's, to theories- He knows it all. It's what he's done for centuries. What he's done his whole life.

The sketch is done quickly. It's plain; just one of his battle set, the one he'd crashed with. He starts filling in details. Measurements, proportions. Close-ups of feathers, of blades. Flips the page, draws a second set, this one his regular flight one. He hesitates, then starts adding in the tail counterweight.

Eventually, hours have passed, and Seto comes home, and his sketchbook is nearly full of wings. Martin doesn't say anything as Seto frowns and picks his book up from the floor. He flips through it, catching the photo when it falls out. Martin pretends not to watch, but he keeps glancing up from the laptop, to find Seto's eyes growing wider and wider.

Finally, the human looks up at him. "Are these-"

"Most of them are sets I've already made. A few are ones I'm working on." There's obvious pride in his voice, which he doesn't try to smother. Martin glances at the internet page he's reading through. Theories on angel flight, on magic, on how the islands work. He has to laugh at how far humans have skewed the information. "Show those to anybody, and you will be dead within an hour."

"I won't," Seto says, and it actually sounds sincere. It makes Martin pause. He... He really shouldn't trust Seto to keep them hidden. After a moment, he shakes his head, and continues scrolling.

"These theories are laughable," Martin mutters. Seto continues to flip through the pages.

"Well, it's not like any of you will tell us how things work," Seto shoots back, but there's no bite behind it. Martin lets it drop. 

Jordan suddenly comes shuffling out of the bedroom. Martin starts at his eyes, staring at the crystal-like pink color. For a long moment, they stare at each other. Then he says, "Oh. You're not wearing your contacts."

Jordan looks away, and Seto clears his throat and stands. He goes into the kitchen, followed by Jordan.

Martin sits there for a long time, before opening a new tab (the fourteenth) and typing in a simple search: human.

He gets the wikipedia page, a definition, and an option for images. He clicks on that. 

Every single one that he sees, all their eyes are grey. For a moment, his gut churns. It's so  _unnatural_ to not see colored eyes. But then again, only magical creatures have color in the irises. Then he happens upon a picture of a human with bright, acidic green eyes. She's mid-scream, being restrained by people in hazmat suits, her matted hair flying and a manic gleam in her eye. Martin leans back, fighting back the feeling of wanting to be sick. He shudders; humans  _should not_ have magic. He clicks on the site the picture is from. He finds an article on the girl. She'd been caught using a fairly weak type of magic, just making her fruits grow a month before the season. 

Frowning at the screen, he reads on, but it really only paints her as some witch. It does give her name; he quickly searches up, and it comes up with thousands of searches. She's not the only one to have been caught, but she was- Homeless, starving, but a magic-wielder. Martin pauses, and thinks of how there are a few lighter specks in Seto's eyes. They could almost be blue, or purple, in the right light...

He looks over at the doorway as Jordan passes by. He hadn't heard Seto come back in, but the human is sitting on the couch again, looking considerably calmer than before. Jordan pauses in the doorway, neon-bright eyes meeting Martin's scalding orange ones. Now that he's looking, he notices that Jordan's eyes glow slightly, reflecting light that isn't actually there. 

They hold the stare for a long time, and then Jordan hurries away.

[...]

The angel looking back at him from the mirror is not one he knows.

It's been almost three months since he's hit the ground. He'd managed to regrow the fairy ring, and make another small batch of supplies for the new set of wings, but it's taken a toll on him and the environment.

Martin stands in the bathroom, leaning heavily on the sink. It creaks slightly and he lightens his weight against it, less it fall off the wall. His brown skin is ashen and pale, and he's visibly thinner. And Seto was right. His eyes don't glow, not even in the dark. His gaze sweeps over himself, up and down, catching on his bare chest, where scars are visible, pale against his skin. Then he looks up, and his eyes remain fixed on his head, on the horns growing above his temples.

Anxiety is a feeling he had known long ago, but it had worn off with time. But now it's back, returned with a vengeance. Martin reaches up and runs his fingers along the ridged bumps of the horns, knowing full well that they would grow to curl back behind his ears and then up, much like a ram. He'd once been proud of the shape, once been proud of the long ears and the tail.

His fingers drop from the horn to his ear. He brushes his hair back, turns his head, and stares at the jagged edge of his ear. It's as smooth as he'd been able to cut it, and passes for a regular shape so long as nobody really stares for too long. So he keeps his hair long, and the windswept curls hide the edges and the horns.

But now his disguise is growing out, the horns rising, reclaiming space they used to take up. Martin rubs at one, tugs at it and lets his head move along with his hand. He knows Seto and Jordan have noticed by now. Neither of them have said anything, thank god.

After a long moment of staring, Martin shakes his head and grabs the towel from the rack, pulling it over his head. He scrubs at his hair through it, drying from the long bath he'd just gotten out of. He smells a bit too much like Jordan, if he's honest, but the last time he'd washed it had just been with water. It's good to be clean.

Martin sighs and pats down the rest of his body, turning around and carefully working around the ports and webbing line in his back. He grabs the roll of paper towels and digs his fingers into the creases, making sure there is no water left. So help him, if they rust...

He pauses, suddenly, hearing voices out in the living room. After a moment, he shrugs, and pulls on his pants. He'd managed to get Jordan to get him fabric, and he'd made a few pairs of clothes. So far, the pajamas he's pulling on are his favorite. 

God, he's becoming lazy. He needs to get out more.

Martin hangs the towel back up and grabs his shirt, swinging the door open and tugging it on as he walks. "Alright, play time is over, Seto, fuck off back to your-"

A glass drops and breaks. Martin finally pulls the shirt down over his face, and stares at the stranger standing in the door. Seto is furiously trying to shove him outside, looking panicked. 

The new human is maybe a foot taller than Seto, probably around six and a half feet. He's scrawny, all limbs, and is trying to grow a beard. His eyes have flecks of bright silver in them, with dark glasses sitting on his short black hair.

The three of them stand there for a long, long moment, before the stranger whispers, "Holy  _fuck_."


	6. blame it on my own sick pride

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> an understanding is met

There's a beat of silence. Then two, three, and then Martin is across the room, and has the stranger pinned to the wall by his throat.

The human lets out a strangled scream, which is quickly choked off by Martin's hands around his neck, and Seto shouts something as well. But all Martin can hear is the blood roaring in his ears, and the pure disgust riling in his gut.

"Martin, Martin! Let him go. Adam won't tell anyone, fuck! Let him go." Seto is suddenly between them, trying in vain to shove Martin away. It's hard since he only really reaches his hips. 

Martin growls and grabs Seto by the wrist, flinging him away, while still holding Adam with the other hand. Seto hits something metal and it clatters across the floorboards.

Turning back to Adam, Martin is about to snarl a threat, when Seto comes right back and starts pushing him again. So he grabs him by the hair and yanks him away. 

It's at that point that Jordan returns home from school, book bag slung over his shoulder. He takes a minute to see what's happening and then is drawing a sigil in the air. Martin growls and throws Adam to the ground, taking several steps back, right out of the spell's range. It harmlessly drifts past, filtering into the wall instead. 

The four of them fall still, Martin still glaring at Adam. He scrambles to his hands and knees, coughing violently and struggling to draw breath back into his body. His throat is already starting to turn colors. Seto quickly goes to kneel by him but isn't able to really do jack shit except for comfort.

"What," Martin hisses, "Is a halfie doing in the house."

Seto looks up, panicked, that and Adam's wide-eyed glance is all the affirmation Martin needs.

"Halfie?" Jordan echoes, having already prepared another spell. He's sweating, though, trembling, and Martin can feel how little magic he's actually got. He lets the spell hit him, this time, but hardly flinches. Jordan is turning slightly green, face pale. His hand is trembling where it's still raised in the air.

Martin looks back at Adam, seeing the silent pleading in his eyes. He slowly starts to get up, leaning on Seto slightly until he's standing. Those silver bits in his eyes could easily pass as just regular coloration, but they glow. Martin knows magic when he sees it. 

He takes a deep breath and silently counts to five. Then he says, "Get him out of here, or I'm going to kill him."

Seto and Adam are quick to scramble out of the house, with Seto slamming the door behind them.

Jordan looks over at him and repeats, "Halfie?"

"Half-angel, dipshit," Martin snaps and turns towards him. "Don't be fucking stupid. You can use magic, how can you not tell?"

"He... Never told us. I-"

Martin shakes his head, walking towards Jordan. The human backs up a step. "If I  _ever_ see that disgusting _fucking_ animal again, I swear to whatever god out there-"

He grabs Jordan by the collar, hauls him into the air, and tosses him towards the kitchen doorway. Jordan stumbles into the wall but manages to keep on his feet.

"I will kill, all three of you, before you can even do so much as blink."

[...]

He goes to the fairy circle. He has enough anger boiling in his chest that it's easy to raise several more materials from the ground. But by the end of it, he's exhausted, trembling, with sweat dripping down his brow. 

A branch snaps behind him.

Martin takes a deep breath and mentally counts to ten this time, then opens his eyes. He'd known they were there; it's hard not to notice the magic swirling about Seto and Adam. He balls his hands into fists and says, "I'm giving you one last chance. I do not-"

"Look, I will understand why you do... not want to be around me," Adam says, and Martin is surprised to find that it's not in English. He turns towards them, still sitting down, and raises an eyebrow. The grammar is skewed, but Martin recognizes it for what it is. He gets to his feet, and says in his own tongue, "Do you, now? You understand how- disgusting, your existence even is?"

Seto looks lost, but Martin barely glances at him. He's grown too close to these humans; he's let them get the better of him, and he needs to remind them that he is the angel, and they are just- Humans. 

"I-..." Adam's face does a strange thing, then he says in English, "I know. I- I have to live with it, every day of my life."

"Don't try to play the pity card on me," Martin growls, anger brimming close to the surface. He jabs a finger in their direction, making the both of them step back. He glances down, glaring at the metal he'd accidentally raised and pointed at them. It rings with his anger, hollow like brass and high like a whistle. Sighing, he returns his glare to them and lets his hand fall to his side. "It won't work. I don't get why you decided to come here, or if you two just made an idiotic mistake."

"Martin, we-"

" _Don't_ ," he snaps, and Seto clicks his mouth shut, shrinking back and almost looking hurt. Turning his attention back to Adam, he growls, "Give me one reason why I should not kill you right now."

Adam looks at a loss. Seto grabs him by the shoulder and quickly steps in front of him. "Because we didn't kill you."

Martin takes a step back, for once silent. He looks at Adam, losing his anger slightly. Halfies are disgusting, unnatural creatures. They shouldn't exist. Simple as that.

But Seto does have a point. And if he were to just kill Adam...

"Fine," Martin growls, "But that's my end of the debt. You saved my life, I spare his. No favors, no more life-debts. Got it?"

"I- wasn't aware there were any-"

Martin shrugs them off with a wave and turns to gather the metal pieces up. He bundles them with the canvas he'd stashed out in the clearing and sets them under the bench. As he's turning to leave, he stops, and says without looking at them, "And if Adam talks? I will kill him. And every single person who gets in the way of that."

They don't say anything to that.

[...]

Seto starts going off to school. He wakes up god-awful early in the morning, leaves, and then returns usually around four in the afternoon. Jordan gets home before him.

So Martin... has most of the day by himself. Which he's fine with, he honestly is. Gives him time to snoop. Gives him time to actually work on his wings without being interrupted. Gives him time to decide what he's going to do about Adam.

He obviously won't just let the halfie walk away without consequences. From what he'd heard from Seto, Adam wasn't supposed to visit the other day. It had been a surprise, a spur-of-the-moment sort of thing. Seto hadn't known he'd show up, just wanting to hang out after a whole summer of not seeing each other. 

The hammer strikes down on the metal, sending sparks flying. He doesn't have a proper anvil; he had to raise one from the fairy ring. It had been difficult to lug away, so he'd eventually given up on keeping his smithing area separate from the ring. Now, it's off to the side, out of the main clearing but still within the illusion. Jordan hasn't said anything.

Martin lifts the feather and tilts it, back and forth, eyeing it. Not his best work. But straight, and flat, and in the right shape. "Primary three of..." He glances down at the other two feathers in the water bucket. "Thirteen."

Sighing, he dunks the red-hot blade in the bucket, steam rising from the heat. He waves it away and steps back, wiping reddened hands off on his pants. He goes over to the primitive fireplace, jabbing at the coals and stoking the fire. After a moment of crouching there, he sighs and finally turns around. "What do you want?"

Adam stands at the edge of the illusion, half-hidden behind a tree. He shifts and comes closer to Martin. "I... I wanted to talk."

"You humans do that too much." Martin grabs the towel from the bench and wipes off grease from his hands, scrubbing it out from beneath his fingernails. "Then again, you aren't human, are you?"

Adam frowns and glances away, grabbing his sunglasses from his face and looking down at them. The silver in his eyes glitters in the sunlight. "I... didn't ask for this. Mom- She made a mistake-"

"And you have to deal with the consequences," Martin finishes, making Adam look up at him.

For a long moment, Martin stands back and simply looks at him. Adam probably takes after his mother, Martin guesses. He's Asian, his hair isn't slicked back, showing the bright streak of silver in his hair that had previously been mostly covered, but he's unhealthily pale and sickly scrawny. Not eating right. And for a second... Adam almost looks like a fledgling. Not quite grown enough to get the port surgery, wingless and helpless. Depending on whoever would take him in.

"Do you know your father?"

A pause, then Adam shakes his head. "No. I haven't- really done much research into it. People would get suspicious, you know? I just... I keep my head down, and I don't say anything. This is my first time actually- talking with one of you."

Martin thinks for a second, initially shoving away the inkling of a suspicion he has. The eyes, that streak of hair... He shakes his head to himself, then goes and grabs a warped feather from the pile by the fireplace. He uses tongs to set it in the fire, waiting for it to heat up. Adam watches him intently, like a rabbit viewing a hawk.

So he says, "It's understood you're not to speak about any of this, yes?"

"What would I say? That I had a full-on convo with an angel because I'm a halfie and it had the time of day?" Adam snorts and crosses his arms, kicking at the ground. "Yeah, that'd go over well."

"At least you have some common sense... _It_?"

"Sorry," Adam says hurriedly, "He. We... It's just force of habit, you know?"

Martin thinks about the humans up Above. Thinks about collars, thinks about prices, thinks about cattle tags and paperwork, and he shakes his head. "Whatever."

Three months ago, he would have killed Adam for the harmless slip-up. The thought makes him pause as he's pulling the feather from the fire. Then he shrugs it off and sets it on the anvil, grabbing the hammer to bend it into shape. 

Adam flinches at the first clang, falling silent. He watches for a while, then says, so quiet that Martin barely hears him, "You're not going to hurt them, are you?"

 _Clang_. "Why would I? I need them."  _Clang._

"Did Seto tell you about-?" Adam trails off.  _Clang_.

"Not fully, but some parts."  _Clang_. "I have enough evidence to piece things together." Clang. "They brought an angel in. They killed their mom. End of story." _Clang._

"The other angel - It was Jordan's idea. He and Seto found it- him- when they were out in the woods."  _Clang._

"Why are you-"  _Clang_. "-telling me this?"

"Because Jordan won't let the same thing happen again. It's a... warning. He won't let you do shit."

Pausing, he turns to Adam. "It's not his decision to make."

They stare at each other for a long moment. Martin squints and sees the fire-bright determination in Adam's eyes. "I'm worried," the halfie admits, quietly, as if he's afraid Martin might kill him. "And I'm... I'm afraid of you. I'm afraid of what you might do."

 _Clang_. Martin slams the hammer one last time, drops it to the ground, then sticks the feather into the water. The steam obscures Adam for a moment.

When it clears, Martin says, "Good."

[...]

It's a week later when Adam shows up again. Seto had missed the bus ride home, so the halfie drove him. Martin... finds that he really doesn't mind. They had already talked, and he knows Adam won't blab. There's too much at stake.

There are too many people in the crossfire.

Jordan doesn't seem to care that Martin doesn't care. He doesn't want Adam there, at all, and that's made obvious the moment he walks through the door. 

Martin is in the living room, drinking coffee from a few different mugs, reading on Seto's kindle. (The poor kid won't have any of his technology by the time Martin leaves.) He looks up when the shouting starts.

"- the fuck out! You're not welcome here, Adam, get the fuck out of my house!"

There's a crash of a chair tipping over, and Martin rolls his eyes, going back to his book and putting the argument on the backburner. Seto starts shouting as well, and then Adam is stumbling into the living room. 

"- trust him! I've known him since I was five, and I've  _known_ since I was seven- Mom knew too!"

"What do I care? Apparently, I can't be trusted," Jordan hisses. Martin draws a connection of him to a fussy housecat. "This is my house, and I won't- I won't allow this."

"I'm- I'm still me, Jordan, it's not like anything's  _changed_ ," Adam protests, backing up when Jordan tries to shove at him. Seto gets between the two. Martin takes a sip of coffee and wishes he had popcorn. He goes to the next chapter of his book.

"You can't do this, Jordan. Adam's harmless, he's not going to-"

"Did you forget what happened last time?" Jordan growls suddenly, voice dropping in volume. Seto pauses. "Do you remember, Seto? Apparently, you  _don't_ , considering you're getting all buddy-buddy with the fucking  _monster_ living in our house." He jabs a finger to Martin.

The angel doesn't bother to look up. He raises his eyebrows and drinks from a mug in the shape of a pig. The Kindle lets him know that he might like another book. 

"I- Martin won't-"

"You can't trust these things, Seto. Trusting them got mom  _killed_. Don't you fucking understand?"

Martin looks up in time to see Seto back up, staring wide-eyed at his brother. He glances over at Adam, then Martin. He takes another step back, then turns and leaves. The door slams shut behind him.

Adam glares at Jordan, who looks as if he doesn't regret a word he's said, then turns and runs out as well, calling for Seto.

Jordan huffs and swivels his glare to Martin when the angel takes another sip from his coffee. "Don't you have anything to say about this?"

Martin stops and looks him dead in the eye. "I would be careful."

"What?"

"You're pushing your brother away. When I did that, my brother and I ended up challenging each other to a fight to the death. Why do you think I'm down here?"

Jordan looks a little pale. He swallows and looks away. A moment passes in silence, then he quietly leaves. Martin hears the door close.

Setting the Kindle down, he glances over towards the window. Sunlight streams in between the blinds, sending bars across the living room. He sees dust mites floating in the light, drifting and disturbed from the recent motion.

With a sigh, Martin finishes one of the mugs of coffee and goes back to reading.


	7. spotlight, moonlight

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> title taken from moonlight by xxxtentacion.

For the next few nights, Jordan doesn't come home until much, much later in the night. He doesn't bother saying anything to either of them. Then again, Seto avoids him like he's the plague, so his distance is probably for the best.

Martin doesn't care, but he's starting to get... annoyed, at Seto's moping. So he tells him he needs to lighten up and brush it off. That only earns the angel a glare, but oh well. He spoke his ten cents.

Then, one night, Jordan just doesn't come home. Martin sits up reading with the lamp on, with an eye on the door. Seto eventually comes up to the living room and sits on the couch for a moment before Martin finally opens one eye and looks at him. Crinkling his nose at whatever smell is wafting from the human, Martin growls, "Take a shower before you sit and stink up the room."

Seto giggles and waves a hand in his general direction. "Sure, man, sure. Whatever."

"I'm serious, you smell horrible. What even is that?"

"What, you want some? Fuck man, fuck, I-" Seto gets to his feet and stumbles and keeps flapping his hand at Martin as if trying to wave off a fly. "I didn't know angels smoked, okay give me a second, you know?"

Martin stares as he crosses the room and makes his way downstairs. He's tempted to make a run for the fairy ring right then and there, but if Seto's finally done moping, then he guesses whatever he's on can't be that bad. So he shrugs and looks back at the Kindle and turns the page.

Then Seto comes tramping back up the steps, stomping like a god damn elephant. Martin groans and rubs his eyes, figuring he probably won't get any peace and quiet that night. The human appears in the doorway and comes to an abrupt halt. A moment later, he chucks something at Martin. It hits him in the forehead.

He growls and reaches for a piece of metal to throw back, but Seto is already collapsing on the couch, giggling like a madman. "Sorry, sorry. I used to play baseball, you know? Well, softball, then, but you know. I quit because of..." He gestures to himself, then his arm flops back down. "You know, you know? They wouldn't let me on the actual baseball team, and I didn't want to play with a bunch of girls."

Martin ignores his ranting and picks up the pipe he'd thrown. He tilts it back and forth, then looks up. "It's an empty pipe. Horray."

"Oh, shit, sorry." Seto rolls back onto his feet and shuffles closer, leaning to hand him a pill bottle and a lighter. "Go at it, man, that shit's Jordan's anyway."

"Good to know you're a thief." He makes a mental note for later and opens the bottle, which hadn't been closed properly. He wrinkles his nose at the smell and pulls out one of the balls of the plant. Rolling it between his fingers, he snorts and starts picking it apart. 

Seto is watching him with wide eyes. He packs the pipe and grabs the lighter and takes a hit and holds it. After a moment, he notices the human's look. Sighing smoke, he grumbles, "There's shit up Above. Not the same, and definitely better, but still." And that's all he's going to say.

Seto laughs at this and rolls onto his stomach. He makes a pillow for his head using his arms. Martin blows more smoke his way, and then even more. "It must be better than anything down here. Pot's, yknow, the best Jordan 'nd I can get our hands on. Alcohol's, uh, banned 'nd all that."

"Sure, kid." Two more hits and he leans back, then lays on the mattress. He really wished he had his bed back home. It was more comfortable to lay on his back on that one, with all the soft pillows and blankets...

Seto reaches out and makes grabby-fingers. Martin takes another draw and gives him the pipe and says, "Gonna have to refill it."

"Yeah." Seto does just that and that's how they spend the next half hour. Passing the pipe back and forth, packing more pot into it, and then when Seto tries to get up he falls over. Martin laughs at him and Seto grumbles something about getting snacks.

Ten minutes later has them both stuffing their faces with stale chips.

"So," Seto mumbles around a mouthful of food, "How do you- get those things?"

"What things?" The pipe has pretty colors on it. Martin turns it back and forth. Like a... like a reverse kaleidoscope.

"Those things." Seto gestures with a chip. "The ones in your back."

"Oh," Martin says, and turns around to look at the ports. He laughs to himself when he realizes he can't twist around that far. "Ports, yeah. Baki did mine."

"Whosit?"

"Baki. Surgery, it's uh. We gotta get the surgery, then we fly." He waves at the air, pretending his hand is a bird. He falls onto the mattress because of it, giggling. "Like motherfuckin- birds."

"Do you think you're just- a weird species of bird?" Seto asks, and Martin has to pause and think for a long, long time about that.

It turns out he falls silent for some minutes. So when he blurts, "Nah!" Seto startles awake.

"Hah?"

"No, we aren't birds," Martin says, offended, and Seto laughs at him. Then he laughs at the ceiling, so maybe he isn't laughing  _at_ Martin, he's just doing it in general. Martin laughs along because the wallpaper has a funny pattern in it.

It takes them a bit to calm down. 

"The room is a boat," Seto concludes, moving his arms like waves.

"Damn straight." He kicks his feet up onto the coffee table- When did he end up halfway on the floor? He realizes that Seto usually keeps to the opposite side of the room. Which is okay, but it's been so long now, so Martin is wondering if he's scared he'll eat him or something. 

So with that thought, he says, "Only the Generals eat humans."

Seto looks at him with wide eyes. Martin thinks he resembles a deer. "So you don't- Gotta worry about me, like, trying to eat you. These teeth are for fighting." He grimaces, pulling up one side of his mouth to show off sharp, serrated teeth. Seto's eyes grow larger. Then he bares his own teeth. Blunt, meant for chewing and grinding, and Martin laughs at the difference between the two of them.

"Do you have a digestive tract?" Seto asks and Martin has to think for a long time, patting his stomach.

"Sort of," is his eventual answer. "But nothing we eat goes to waste. Need a... shit ton of energy, 'nd shit, to y'know. Fly."

"I wanna fly," Seto says after a bit of thought. He spreads his arms out and starts sliding off the couch head-first. Martin easily raises a hand and supports his head, so he ends up laying a foot above the ground. Wait, since when did Martin go closer to the couch?

"You don't have magic," Martin says, "You need that to fly."

Seto falls quiet.

They stay like that for a bit. Then Seto suddenly gets up, stumbling. "Here, c'mere, I wanna show you something."

Grumbling, Martin crawls to his feet and follows him, bending in half just to make sure he won't hit his head on the doorway. Seto goes tromping down the stairs with Martin on his tail. 

When he had been through the basement a while ago, Martin hadn't taken a look around. But now he does, stumbling to a stop at the bottom of the stairs. There's old furniture piled against the wall across from the basement door, piled haphazardly, with a small gap in the right side of it. Blankets cover the top, and if Martin bends and turns his head he can make out lights strung inside the little tent-like structure.

Separating one side of the room from the other are several drapes, most in bright, colorful patterns. Martin thinks he sees an angel, like one with feathers, on one of them. He stares at it for a long time.

Seto notices him looking and says, "Do those exist?"

Martin looks at him, wavering slightly on his feet. He says, "They used to."

"Where'd they go?"

"They're like the dragons," Martin murmurs, "They just up and disappeared one day."

"Dragons?"

"My brothers and I, we- We used to have two. They were sisters, they lived on our island." Oil-spill and opal scales. Ancient creatures. He remembers the soft fur spilling down their spines and the antlers, and wishes he could go back. 

"Brothers? I thought you just had Nitram." Seto pulls back the curtains and Martin looks around his room. It's cluttered, but there's an organization to it. Books upon books are piled on the shelves, with a _large_ fish tank full of different fish against the left wall. His bed is next to the tank, pressed against a corner. A tri-color flag is hanging above it. Pictures, framed and not, are tacked up all over the walls and on corkboards. To the right is a desk, with the laptop. Martin makes a mental note to steal that back. Then he realizes that he makes a lot of mental notes.

"I have three," he says, "I killed one. Nitram's the last one I have left." He wavers and then ducks into the room. He isn't sure the bed frame will hold him so he plops down in the middle of the many, many rugs. It's soft.

Seto stares at him for a long moment, then laughs as if he told a not-funny joke and he is trying not to be rude. He hurries over to his bed, grabbing pillows and blankets and throwing them to the other side. Then he digs his shoulder under the mattress and lifts, and pulls out-

Well, god damn.

Martin takes the feather from Seto's extended hand. He examines it, staring at his reflection in the beautiful, shiny black metal. There are golden engravings along the outer edge, incredibly detailed, with runes of protection and strength. It's a secondary feather and a large one at that. Compared to the measurements on his wings, the angel is probably just a handful of inches taller than him. And it's in perfect condition.

"Where did you..."

"His wings were broken, but not as bad as yours. I thought you might want that."

Martin looks down at the feather. He would know these engravings anywhere. He turns the feather over and runs a hand over the initials by the shaft of it. "Right." 

Seto grins lopsidedly at him, eyes tired. "I don't want it. Uncomfortable to sleep on."

"Yeah, I could fucken imagine." Martin sets it to the side and lays down where he's at. The ceiling isn't finished, leaving boards and wires bare to the room. Seto had covered most of the spaces with more tapestries, but there are still a few barren spots. The room doesn't actually have any lightbulbs, but just a bunch of holiday lights strung all around. Martin looks over at him and is silent.

Seto sighs and falls onto the bed. He lays there for a bit, then suddenly starts thrashing. He manages to kick off most of the pillows and blankets, of which there are many, many more than necessary, onto the floor. Martin grabs them and starts forming a somewhat-nest on the floor.

Meanwhile, the kid asks, "The plants glow up there, right?"

"Right. It's where we get our, uh, glowy stuff, too," Martin answers, picking a pillow up and twisting around to set it down. "We make most of our lighting out of it. Really fucking bright when on fire, y'know?"

That pillow isn't right, so he picks it up again and puts it in a new spot. It stays there for a minute before he moves it again. Seto rocks on his bed, hands holding his feet, which are crossed. He looks like a child. "Do the islands bump into each other?"

"Sometimes, but we have the, uh... The uh..." Martin trails off, forgetting the word in English. He shrugs and says, "The hard bubble things."

Seto blinks at him, uncomprehending, then nods as if he was making complete sense. Then he keeps nodding. Then he bursts into more movement and scrambles to grab his phone. He swings around the bed, back facing Martin, and holds the phone up. 

Martin grabs the pillow again and looks up in time for Seto to take a picture. He blinks, then sets the pillow down and laughs. "You gotta delete that."

"Yeah, eventually. I wanna show Adam, though. He won't be _lieve_ this." Seto rolls onto his stomach, feet kicking in the air as he types.

Martin laughs and falls over because, no, Adam probably wouldn't believe it. He says, "Who would?" and Seto has to pause at that. A second later, his texting resumes. Martin can imagine him shrugging.

They lay there for a long time. Eventually, Martin thinks Seto falls asleep. After a moment of complete silence, the angel lifts his head. Seto's phone is still on, the screen changing colors as it plays through some video he'd been watching. Martin stares for a while, and with a hint of disappointment realizes he's already coming down. He didn't really expect much, honestly, from shit grown on the Ground. But still, he'd been somewhat hopeful.

With what's probably an exaggerated groan, Martin gets to his feet. He stumbles somewhat but holds his balance easily after that. Taking his phone out from under him, Martin turns it off and then nudges Seto's head off his arms and onto the bed. Martin then thinks twice about it, because Seto's neck does look uncomfortable like that. So he grabs a pillow from the floor and wedges his palm under Seto's cheek.

And that's when he realizes that his hand is bigger than the human's entire head. Startled by this, Martin stands there for a moment, staring. Then he lifts Seto's head, softly, and manages to get the small pillow under it. He quickly takes his hands away, wiping them on his pajama pants before grabbing a blanket and tossing it carelessly over Seto.

The human snorts in his sleep and rolls, one arm falling to hang off the bed. Martin scowls and looks away, and hurries upstairs after turning the lights off.

Jordan still isn't home, which isn't surprising. Martin glances around the empty, dark kitchen. After a moment, he sighs and goes about making himself a cold sandwich. He piles most of the package of turkey on it. He eats it in two bites and then grabs the pack of ham, and eats that. Finally, he resigns himself to just sitting in front of the fridge. 

He's  _starving_. It was probably a bad idea to smoke something that made him hungry. Up until this point, he'd been able to scrape by with the little Seto and Jordan had to spare to give him. He eats twice as much as they do, but even so, it's not nearly enough. He presses a hand to his ribs and can feel them against his skin. His wrists are too thin and he's honestly starting to worry.

So for the next hour and a half, he sits in front of the open fridge and pulls out old leftovers, the bag of cheese, lunchmeat, a few pre-made meals, and eats everything cold. Eventually, he has to settle for a bag of shredded lettuce he saw Jordan use for tacos.

Then he gets to his knees and opens the freezer, scanning the contents. There are two frozen steaks, which look cheap and slightly brown despite being raw. He grabs those and tosses them into the sink. Then he gets the bag of pre-cooked chicken and tosses that in as well. With a jerk of magic, the faucet turns and starts running. He turns on the hot as well.

Martin sits there for a moment, then stands and slams both doors closed on the fridge. He goes to the sink and takes out the mostly-thawed meats. Tearing the package with his teeth, he starts eating one of the steaks. It's chewy and disgusting, but he doesn't care all that much. The chicken is slightly better, at least, and had been seasoned, so it doesn't taste all that bad. He eats the other steak and grabs paper towels to wipe off the blood from his mouth and hands.

Dropping the red-stained paper towels and the trash into the can, Martin pauses to look around again. He notices the windowsill above the sink has a few cactus plants in it. He turns away from them and continues through the hallway. Passes Jordan's door and the bathroom, and comes to the stairs. After a second, he starts upwards.

The stairwell falls away and he steps onto soft carpet. Surprised, he looks down. It's the first time he's seen any carpet in the house; everywhere else is hardwood or tile. He glances around at the room to his left. It's just a bedroom. It has a beautiful picture of golden flowers, a field with a tree at the end, and blue skies with soft clouds. It's oil, from the looks of the raised brush strokes. The walls are a pale almost-yellow, with a dark wood bedframe and grey and light yellow bedsheets. A total of two dressers sit in the room, one right by the stairs and the other at the opposite side of the bed. There's a corner desk between two windows, with a computer sitting at it. Martin hesitates, then moves towards that.

He jabs at the power button and, to his surprise, the screen lights up. It takes a few moments to turn on, but with a whirr, it shows the home screen. Unlike Seto's laptop, this one has very few icons on the main screen. He clicks on the search engine one and it opens up Google. It isn't logged in.

Exiting out of that and turning the screen off, Martin turns towards the dresser closer to the stairs. The mirror is probably the largest in the house, with pictures tucked into the edge of it and taped on all around the glass. Frowning, he grabs one from the mirror, peeling the tape away.

Staring back at him is an angel he could probably recognize with his eyes closed. It's a photo taken, much like how Seto just took one, and the same woman as before is the photographer. She's smiling, bright, and the General behind her has his lips turned up slightly. Martin's hands shake as he sets it down.

And with a start, he remembers to look up and realizes that the ceiling is actually incredibly high. It's a good four feet above his head, with a large skylight that he would probably be able to fit through. Moonlight streams into the room through it, bathing everything in a blue glow. Martin stares at the skylight a bit longer, frowning at the cord hanging from it. He reaches up and yanks, and to his surprise the windowpanes fold back, letting dead leaves fall into the room. The chilly night air pours in, washing over him and making goosebumps rise.

Rubbing his arms, he pulls the cord again and closes the window. Martin shivers and glances over his shoulder, searching for something not there. He knows ghosts don't exist, but at that moment...

Swallowing, he pulls out the top draw in the dresser. He finds clothes, but digs around and- And there's a book. He flips through it, eyes scanning the words. A journal, from the looks of it. Several pages are filled with runes and sigils. He recognizes some characters and his blood is starting to turn cold. He stops on one page, staring at the picture, and at the note folded and stuck in the pages. 

There's the head General, again, though this time he's as he should be. Face impassive, eyes cold, suit perfect and impeccable. The picture is obviously ripped from the portrait of all twelve, and the edges of Junys and Nathaniel's shoulders are on the General's left and right. He grabs at the note and unfolds it, eyes scanning over the letters. It's coded, of course, he isn't surprised. From the looks of it, it would take him a while to decode. He slips it into his pocket and continues looking through the journal. On the very next page is a quickly-drawn rune, the circle not finished. He passes a thumb over the characters inside, and they glow slightly. 

Curious, he glances around, finding a pencil at the computer desk. Martin hesitantly fills in the last bit of the circle. Immediately, an invisible force slams into him, shoving the air from his lungs. He collapses backward, gasping like a fish and clutching at his chest. Hairs standing on end, he can  _feel_ the magic leaving him, and he tries to scramble to stop it but finds that he can't move. 

Martin manages to roll over onto his stomach, coughing and dry-heaving. With shaking hands, he somehow is able to grab at the pencil and quickly scrubs the mark he made off with the eraser. 

Still trembling, he drops the pencil and lays there for a long moment, just trying to breathe. After a moment, he sits up, blinking away the spots in his vision. Belatedly, he realizes everything had turned white, completely blinding him. He looks back at the open book, face down where he'd dropped it.

When he turns it over, the angel suppressing sigil stares back at him like an eye, unwavering and dangerous. He blinks back at it, unnerved, and quickly slams the book shut.

"Crap," he whispers fearfully, climbing to his feet. He glances around the moonlit room one last time, then grabs the book and hurries out.


	8. kitchen fork

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> say something you shouldn't, and you lose your teeth

As sparks fly from the welder, Martin gathers them up with magic. It forms a tight ball of fire in the center of the fairy ring, churning and burning angrily at being contained. He pauses, lifting his goggles from his eyes to look around. The generator he'd dragged out to the circle sits nearby, gurgling happily and rumbling away. One of the two skeletal frames of his new wings lay in front of him, on the inside edge of the circle. The other is sprawled out right before him as he attaches joints and clips to it.

Martin's gaze magnetizes to the desk, where the diary sits innocently among scraps of metal and sketch papers. He stares for a second, then shakes his head and brings his goggles down again. The welder bursts to life and he goes back to carefully piecing together feathers. When he pauses again, he tests the joints, moving them somewhat easily. With a sigh, he steps back. 

"Shouldn't you be wearing more than just goggles?"

Somehow, he doesn't scream, but he does jump and whip around, hand going to the nearest object, his hammer. Seto blinks at him from the edge of the illusion and steps all the way through and into the clearing.

"What does it matter?" Martin tests the magic in the air, but doesn't find anything unusual. It's still avoiding Seto. Almost as if it doesn't like him. Martin slowly puts the hammer back down. "It doesn't hurt me."

Seto shrugs and rubs at the back of his neck. Martin snags at magic in the air and shoves it towards him, trying to see if there's a change. Other than a sigh, Seto does nothing. But a few threads travel through him, passing by easily. "You've been out here for, like, three days. Aren't you hungry?"

"I want to go home," Martin says, the anger in his voice making Seto take a step back. 

"I- Yeah, okay." The human stands there for a long moment, then turns and leaves. Martin watches him go with cold eyes. With a grimace, he returns to his work.

[...]

He has to pause eventually. Not even angels can go for too long without food and rest. So he sits against the trunk of a tree, and eats the loaf of bread and the lunchmeat he'd stolen from their house. The journal sits in front of him on a board across his lap, along with a handful of papers and pencils. 

He's already halfway through decoding the book. He isn't happy with what he's found.

There are more sigils in it, most of them he recognizes. The suppressing one from before, he memorizes and tucks away to the back of his mind. There are several banishing sigils as well, and even some for warding off humans. He laughs at those.

But those pictures, and the hand-written note...

Martin reaches down to feel his pocket, fingers running along the outline of the folded paper. After a second, he brings it out. It had been the first one he'd decoded, of course. 

_(Kerberos, I know this must be hard for you.)_

It's easy to put the clues together, even without fully being able to read what's in the journal. But there are also check stubs, balances, and  _demands_. Martin skims through a page of math, mentally doing the calculations already done. He flips back a few pages. An unfamiliar name, Lynell, crops up far too many times for his liking, but so does Jordan's. The one in the note, Kerberos, isn't mentioned at all, so he has to assume that she is the writer for the journal.

_(But you will not speak of this to anybody. We will lie, as we always have, and always will.)_

Martin sniffs and drinks from his water bottle. He makes a note on his papers, full of decoded letters and characters. He'd recognize most of the language used, and after realizing it's in  _his_ native language, it's been easy to figure out what is said.

_(But this child, you will lie about her for the rest of your life. She isn't yours, and she never will be.)_

He stops short a few pages close to the end of the journal, staring at the unfamiliar word. Frowning, he sets upon decoding it, trying to piece the letters together. 

**_קคשєкเɭคภเקเﻮเยร_ **

He can roughly translate it with something to do with the ocean, or a sea, but after that, he doesn't know what it could be. Scowling down at the book, he decides to translate the rest of it. It takes him another two hours to have the journal in a mostly-readable language. Then things start clicking together. This child, Lynell, is-

"Well, damn," Martin says.

_(I own her. I own you. Remember that.)_

[...]

The battle set's skeleton is made for durability, made for swift movements and swipes. He tests the awkward-bending joints, trying to decide if it's even worth it to reuse them, or make new ones. With most of the feathers attached to the left wing, it looks somewhat... okay. Of course, it isn't his best work. And the rest of it will need to be done with the wing connected to him.

Besides, he doesn't think he can make the intricacies of the port-attachment. It's too fine detail and small wires to even try with new ones. And anyway, the skeleton comes equipped with blades. He'd had to get rid of the hidden feather blades, the ones hiding in sheaths, but the running edge of the skeleton is still sharp enough to cut someone in half.

The fireball in the center of the ring spits and hisses. It's the only illumination he has tonight in the clearing, but it's enough. He sits close to its warmth, ignoring the way his breath fogs the air. His stomach growls. He pauses and sighs to himself, then shakes his head and grabs for the bowl he'd poured oil into. Dipping fingers into it, he gets to work trying to grease out the joints. 

Martin sits there for a while, hands staining black from the grease. He works it into crevices and then pulls at it with magic, sinking it into the metal. With a wave of his hand, a tendril from the ball comes over. He smooths it across the wing with a gentle hand. It settles, and the clearing is much darker, losing half it's light. Eventually, satisfied with the wing, he stands, and carefully maneuvers it around. With a jerk, he shoves it into the port on his back. The pain is lessened this time; the wings aren't so horribly broken, and the metal hums quietly after it's attached to him. Content, and somewhat happy.

With a sigh, he rolls his shoulder, slowly spreading the single wing. The weight has him unbalanced and he has to lean to the right. Martin inspects it, opening and closing it first, then moving the feathers along it. He can feel the magic flowing easily, spreading from him to each feathertip.  _This_ is what he'd missed, almost as much as being able to fly. The wings are an extension of him, of magic, of body, and missing their weight on his back has had him all off-kilter. 

So now, no more fuck ups. No more rest stops. 

He's getting off of this god-forsaken planet.

[...]

The house is quiet when he finally steps into it two days later, wings mantled and fully formed. He'd had to use the battle set's webbing since there is nothing else strong enough down on the ground to hold him up.

Martin glances around the living room. At the mattress he'd slept on for almost four months, at the scrapes from metal on wood flooring, and then lastly at Seto, who is sleeping out on the couch for some unknown reason.

The angel pauses where he's at then continues through to the hallway. Jordan's door is slightly ajar, like always, and a light is on within. Martin pushes it open and Jordan scrambles to his feet from where he'd been sat at his desk.

For a long moment, the two glare at each other. Martin tests the magic in the air and Jordan gives a visible wince when he tugs at the strings connected to him. "What do you want?" Jordan whispers.

"Firstly, my brother's knife back," Martin says, scanning the room. Jordan goes slightly pale when he steps in, wings rattling like windchimes. After a second, the human bends down and unlocks the bottom drawer of his desk. He pulls out the pearlescent blade, polished and clean of blood. Martin snags it away from him with a yank of magic. Jordan hisses and clenches one hand around the other. The metallic smell of blood hits Martin's nose, and his mouth waters. He shakes his head and then reaches into his back pocket, holding up the journal.

Jordan goes even paler. He takes a trembling step backward, one hand reaching out so he can lean on his desk. "Where did you- Did you go through Mom's room?"

"As it turns out," Martin says, flipping the pages of the book, "She isn't your mom. But you knew that already."

"No, I-"

"Don't lie to me. I am an Angel, human, and I know what a lie is when I see one. I can  _hear_ your heartbeat pick up." Martin snaps the book closed and shoves it back into his pocket. It's evidence, and this- This needs to _never_ get out. Especially if people realize he'd been here. "You don't want this getting out. I understand that. But this- This Lynell?"

Jordan looks angry for a second, a fight forming on his lips. Martin waves him off. "Relax. I won't tell the kid I know his deadname. I'm not an asshole... It took me one hell of a long time to decode it properly, though. Kerberos, his mother, she's pretty smart, for a human."

He thinks back to the note, back to the DNA samples tucked into the journal. He barks a humorless laugh. "Then again, she fucked a General. So she can't be  _that_ smart."

"Don't you  _dare_ speak about Mom like that-" Jordan takes one step forward, and then Martin has a wing spread across the room, the first primary feather perched at his throat.

"I will speak about you savages however I want," Martin hisses, eyes dark, all humor gone. There's a second of stillness, and then he says, "Where are they? The suppressing sigils? I know you two have them. Or, Seto must, at least."

Jordan stares at him fearfully for a second, before he whispers, "They're on our backs. I- I burned mine off a long time ago."

"That's why you have magic," Martin mutters and Jordan hesitates, then nods. He glances to the left, then the right. He shifts in place but falls still when Martin presses the bladed feather to his chest.

"What are you- Going to do?"

"Does Seto know?"

Jordan quickly shakes his head, protesting, "You can't tell him! He- He doesn't..."

"... I think he deserves to know," Martin says, after a moment. Decision made, he draws his wing back, and pockets his brother's knife. It's a comfortable weight at his side. "And I am going to tell him. You won't be able to stop me."

Without another word, Martin turns and leaves Jordan there. He hurries to the living room and, without so much as a warning, easily grabs Seto up off the couch. The kid screams and thrashes, but Martin only lets him down when they're outside.

"What the hell, Martin?" Seto screeches, fixing his clothes. He stomps a few feet away from Martin, seething. "That's  _not_ how you wake someone up, you dickwad!"

"Seto, I think we should take a walk." Martin puts his hand on Seto's shoulder, not bothering to let the kid even try to get away. He practically drags Seto into the woods, with the kid struggling and shouting the entire way. They take the same path they did all those weeks ago, eventually making their way up to the cliffs. Eventually, Seto gives up his struggle and trudges along, grumbling about sharp sticks and stones hurting his feet.

Reaching the tree he'd rested against, Martin finally stops and turns to him. Seto glares up at him, eyes glowing in the moonlight. Those lighter flecks in his eyes... Martin quickly shrugs off the notion, looking out at the woods.

Martin says, softly, "Kid, you- You're a halfie-"

"I already know," Seto whispers, looking away. "I've known since... a long time."

Martin clicks his mouth shut because he can't say anything to that. He'd figured that Seto hadn't known. "And you're- okay with it?"

Seto shrugs a shoulder. "It's- Why wouldn't I be? I'd be a- a hypocrite. I can't be okay with Adam, and then turn around and... hate myself, like... Like this." He trails off and looks away, rubbing the back of his neck. "I- I've seen Jordan's back, anyway. He used to have the same sort of marking I do, but now it's all burned off. I've- I've tried, before, but I couldn't make myself do it."

After a long moment of thought, Martin sighs and sits down in the grass. Seto looks down at him with wide eyes. Martin glances his way, then pats the grass next to him. Hesitantly, Seto sits down. "Why are you not-"

"Why am I not threatening to kill you, as I did with Adam?"

Seto nods.

And for a while, Martin doesn't have an answer to the question. Eventually, he shrugs a shoulder, making his wings rattle like chimes, and says, "I guess I've grown soft."

"Oh," the halfie says intelligently. He looks out at the woods, then up to the sky. An island drifts over them, washing everything into blackness. Martin raises a hand and a small ball of fire ignites in his palm. He doesn't miss Seto's flinch.

Quietly, Martin says, "Jordan isn't to be trusted, Seto."

"He's my brother." Seto plucks at grass at his leg, avoiding Martin's look.

Martin nods once, then asks, "What happened to your sketchbook?"

"My what?"

"The one that had all my wing drawings in it."

"I- Oh, I, uh... It should be at school."

Silence falls again. Martin chances a glance at Seto to find the kid is looking a little lost. The island passes by and the moon comes back, but by now clouds have come to cover it. Martin can see their breaths fog the air. He belatedly realizes Seto is shivering horribly, tucked in on himself. With a sigh, the angel shifts and unzips his jacket, which he'd sewn back together after the duel with Nitram. It's his only flight jacket, but it works. 

He drops it over Seto's head and the kid laughs somewhat before tugging it around him. 

A fleck of white drifts down. They both watch it before it suddenly swirls and smacks into Martin's shoulder.

And that's how they sit for a while, watching small flakes of snow drift down. The ground is still too warm for anything to stick, but Seto still mutters hopefully, "Maybe I'll get off of school on Monday."

Martin laughs at this. He watches as the snowflakes start growing in size and frequency. He says, "Maybe."

And then, he turns fully towards Seto, and puts a hand on his shoulder. Seto looks at him, startled at the sudden movement.

"Come with me," Martin says, and the kid's eyes grow even wider. "Up Above. I'll- You can be safe. I can teach you magic, get rid of the mark. You won't- ever need, or want, for anything. I can bring you with me."

Seto stares at him with a pale face, and then he turns away. Silence descends upon them. Martin keeps watching him, and then shakes his shoulder slightly when he doesn't say anything. "Come with me. I'm- I'm leaving in two days, and I need- I _want_ you to come with me."

"No."

His grip tightens, and Seto ducks away, reaching up to try and pry his fingers away. Martin lets go and sits back, surprised. Seto doesn't look at him, gaze locked on a passing island.

Martin finally drags his eyes up to the sky, watching the snow. He says, "Oh."


	9. lamb to the slaughter

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> at this point, i just want the first part to the series done.

Martin kicks over one of the newly-grown mushrooms forming the circle. Then he kicks over another two, just for good measure. Because fuck his life. 

Rubbing an eye and picking out the sleep from the corner of it, Martin spins slowly, waving metal pieces over to him. He physically has to drag the welder and the generator over, as well. The magic is dwindling horribly; it can't support him anymore. So with a heavy sigh, he drops all the metal into the center of the main circle. After a moment of staring at it, he starts mentally checking off his list. Wings? Finished and attached. Dagger? In his pocket. Seto?

Doing homework in the living room, not getting ready to leave for Above.

Martin grumbles to himself and kicks at a bent feather, then curses again when he realizes he still has to gather all the broken pieces still in the house. He sighs again and takes a few steps back, hands going to his hips and wings spreading. A feather catches on a tree branch and with a frustrated scowl, he slices at it. It clatters to the ground, dead leaves crackling beneath it. 

The snow from last night had stuck, surprisingly. The area around him is kicked up and muddied, smearing the otherwise-pristine image of a fresh snow. Martin can't bring himself to care. It's not like he isn't used to the cold, and it's not like it snows all that much up above the clouds. 

With that thought in mind, he is worried about his wings. The joints are creaking much more than they're supposed to, and he's concerned that the cold might affect the Ground-grown metal. Martin runs a hand over one of his primaries and scowls at the frost coating the metal. Fuck, he might have to wait for the temperature to rise again. 

Looking up at the storm clouds, though, he isn't sure the temperature  _will_ rise. Winter seems to have finally hit, and it hit hard. A good three inches overnight in a freak storm that wasn't supposed to happen.

Just his fucking luck.

Martin stands there looking at the sky for a long moment, then with a sigh, he starts back towards the house. He can't leave any evidence.

Seto looks up quickly when he shoves his way into the house, then averts his gaze almost immediately. Martin kicks snow off his shoes all over the rug, then tramps around noisily and gathers any pieces of metal up. He grabs a blanket from his mattress and bundles everything up with it. Jordan pokes his head out of his room to see what the noise is about. He looks troubled, as if he's about to say something. Martin glares at him and he looks away.

Surprisingly, Jordan doesn't go back into his room. Instead, he comes out, his backpack on his shoulder. "Seto? I'm going out. I'll- be gone for a while."

"Yeah, sure," Seto mutters and flips a page in his math book. He reads over it for a second then starts writing something on his paper. 

 Martin glances between the two then squints at Jordan. "Where are you going?"

Jordan hurries to the door, but Martin blocks him. "I said. Where are you going?"

"Out," Jordan snarls, but sweat is dripping down his forehead. Martin stares him down and steps away. Jordan's hand quivers when he opens the door. He avoids eye contact and quickly slips outside. Martin can hear him running through the snow from inside.

Shrugging off the uneasy feeling, Martin looks back to Seto, surprised to find the kid staring at him. After a long moment, Martin says, "The offer still stands."

Seto looks back down to his homework. After a long moment, he says, "I wanna work at NASA."

"NASA?"

"I'm looking at universities, you know? I already sent out applications, and... I'm graduating from high school a year early. I- I have... everything ahead of me." Seto taps his pencil against his leg, then looks up. "You know?"

Martin didn't. He thinks back to when he was in his early hundreds, thinks about being excited for the future.

So he says, "Kid, I could've ruled the East. I would be now if shit had worked out... But it didn't. And now here I am, making wings for asshole angels, because it's what pays."

He grabs his bundle of evidence, thinks about his next few words, and decides to break the kid's dreams. "You're not going to NASA. The hell what that even is, is beyond me What you're gonna do, is get some shitty serving job like Jordan, and then wither away for the rest of your life in this old-ass house, because you can't blend well with society. Your magic will come in, you won't have proper training, and you'll be ruined. You won't be able to have your dream job because everything is run by your father, the head General, and he probably has very, very close tabs on you. He won't allow you to have a job at NASA, he won't allow you to live any sort of life you want."

With a sigh and a shrug, he pretends not to see Seto's hurt expression. He yanks open the door, letting sharp wind whistle into the room. "The best life you'll get is with me. And that's that."

"I am  _not_ going to be some slave, like everyone else up there," Seto hisses, and Martin gives him an unimpressed glance. 

"I didn't say you were going to be," he replies and slams the door shut behind him.

[...]

He burns the circle. Pours gasoline over everything, and lights it with a simple twitch of fire magic. Eyes flashing yellow, Martin stands back and makes the fire roar, makes it eat at trees and metal and cloth. He passes through the illusion and draws a circle in the snow around it. The fire flickers from within the illusion, but never fully breaches.

Martin jerks his wings forward and his eyes darken back to orange. He stands back, breathing in the scent of smoke, and with a sigh, he spreads his wings. He inspects them, running hands over feathers and bending joints without using the connection, and then he tests their speed with a heavy flap that sends his right foot sliding backward.

He doesn't think he'll be able to get into the air without some sort of head start. He could probably leap from the roof, or maybe the cliffs, but a running start isn't something that could happen without a long stretch of open space.

Deciding he doesn't feel like clambering up to the cliffs again, he figures the roof is the best option. So he turns and heads back. The night is finally starting to wear down, with the cloudy sky darkening with each passing minute. The moon is hidden somewhere behind the clouds and islands, so Martin has little illumination to work with. It's quiet except for his footsteps crunching through the snow. He finds the quiet unnerving and stops to glance around, listening for anything other than his own breathing.

There's absolute silence.

Frowning to himself, Martin picks up the pace, the edge of the woods in view. That's when he sees it. A flash of red, of blue, of red, of blue. Martin drops into a sudden crouch, just in time to avoid a spotlight scanning over the trees. 

"Fuck," he growls, and prowls along the thin underbrush, careful not to snap any twigs. On all fours, he leaves only prints in the snow. Keeping his wings close to his body, he crawls until he's directly behind the house. He strains his hearing and can make out distant voices. A car pulls up, adding more lights to the array.

Staying low, Martin slowly starts climbing the hill to the house. He doesn't blend well, but if he could just reach the roof...

Suddenly, there's a ruckus of noise. Martin drops even lower, falling still. He hears shouting, and then a whoop of a siren and someone over a loudspeaker. Then he hears Seto's voice.

From his distance, Martin can't make out much. But despite himself, he starts hurrying forward. Under the cover of the darkening sky, he makes it to the shed. Pressing against the wall, he peers around the corner. All the humans seem to be in the front of the house, and he has an inkling that it's a trap. Still, he darts to the back of the house, and with a heave, hauls himself onto the roof. The gutter groans and bends beneath his weight. 

He quietly scrambles to the peak, hiding below the skylight to Kerberos' room. After a moment of catching his breath, he peaks over the edge.

Jordan is standing among a few police, talking to another man in a suit. Surprisingly, there are no angels among the gathering of cars and flashing lights, so Martin has to at least count that blessing.

But then Jordan gestures towards Seto, who-

Who's kneeling over the back end of a car, hands behind his back, with a cop locking his hands together.

Martin freezes, blood turning sharp. After a second, he growls and stands fully.

And he brings a wing around just in time for bullets to bounce off the feathers. There are screams below, and Seto breaks free from the cop's grip, and he runs towards the house. Martin steps over the peak of the roof and starts sliding down. He gathers magic, and suddenly one of the cars flips upside-down. He feels for the singing of gasoline and lights it. The explosion sends most of them down. 

Martin is just about to drop to the ground and start slicing people in half when Seto clambers to his feet and shouts, "Martin, stop! This isn't helping, just stop!"

Then Seto whips around and holds out a hand to the humans as if that would do anything. Martin curses how stupid humans are and moves to drop down, but then Seto whips around and holds out a hand to him as well. 

Rattling his wings angrily, Martin stays back, glaring at the rest of them. Most have their guns trained on him. He tries to snag magic through them to make them backfire, but the distance keeps him from doing fine work with magic. He's already starting to tire from the previous fire use. 

And then Seto, the idiot that he is, says, "He's not going to hurt you. Just- Let him leave, he won't hurt anybody."

"Seto, get back here," Jordan hisses, and then says even more quietly, so that his half-brother can't hear, "The thing's got him brainwashed. He thinks it's his friend."

Martin decides he'll kill Jordan, first, and then everyone else. He slides down another foot, making roof tiles rattle off of the building. A shot rings out, then another. Martin laughs at their idiocy and spreads his wings. "Open target, fuckers," he growls, and with a whip of magic, has another cop car sliding twenty feet to the right, slamming into multiple people. More bullets ring out and he can hear them whistling through the air, screeching at him. He easily ducks down and lets them harmlessly pass by. A single bullet wouldn't hurt him enough to stop him from flying, but he doesn't feel like dealing with the pain. Miniscule as it would be.

And then he notices that Seto hasn't said shit in a minute. Bringing a wing up to deflect anything else, Martin glances down to where he'd been. For some reason, Seto's on the ground, curled in a ball, and-

"Oh, shit," Martin hisses. He glances once at the red snow, then over at the cops, and then leaps. His wings snap out with several rapid clicks, and a cop's skull crushes under his foot when he lands. Another two are caught on the bladed wing he swings around. And then he turns, flaps his wings twice, and drops to where Seto's laying. The kid is unresponsive, face pale and pained, hand clasped on his stomach. 

Without thinking, Martin easily scoops him up and then jumps up onto the roof. He takes two bounds, snaps his wings open, and leaps into the sky.

The Ground drops away quickly as he spirals up, and then the trees and snow are gone when he rises into the cloud cover.


	10. dug two graves

Martin breaches the clouds and immediately has to swerve to avoid an island. The plants illuminate a handful of angels, sitting around an outdoor table. The smell of food wafts his way, but he quickly dives away and flaps heavily. Mind racing, Martin looks around, trying to get his bearings. All he needs is to find the U-shaped island, but everything in Above moves. It could be halfway across the country by now.

Another island passes by overhead, blotting out the moonlight. Martin slews left around it, glancing at the runes on the underside of it. It's one of the hand-made islands, with sharp edges and nothing natural. He doesn't recognize it.

Seto shifts in his arms and makes a noise and Martin holds him closer, pausing to look down at him. "Hey, hold on to this," Martin says to him, taking one of his hands and pressing it to his bullet wound. The kid cries out and struggles slightly, eyes opening somewhat. He keens like a wounded animal, but at Martin's insistence, keeps pressure on the injury.

Martin looks up in time to dodge a chain bridging the gap between two large plots of land. He rises further into the air, breathing going shallow as the air gets thinner. His wings groan from the cold. He studies the few islands ahead of him and turns to the right, following the glowing buildings and lands ahead of him. Finally, artificial light starts mixing with the bioluminescence. 

There's a whistle to his left and he easily rises in the air, letting someone pass by. The angel looks at him for a moment, then continues on her way. He shuffles Seto into one arm and reaches behind him for his hoodie, only to realize that he'd left it on the Ground. "Fuck," he mutters, glancing down at the kid. He can't risk having other people see him with his horns, but he can't backtrack to hide them or Seto might bleed to death. He isn't sure how long it takes for humans to die from a bullet

Anxiety quickly building, Martin heaves a sigh and continues forward. Some things will have to be dealt with later. Right now, he's got something somewhat more important on his hands.

It takes him another half hour of flying to finally find the main cluster of islands. Some are shopping centers, recreation, food, various wing shops that he helps stock. And then there's the Arena. 

Martin glares at the giant tree as he passes by, eyes traveling over the roots that twine around and over the coliseum-esque building. One of the windows is still shattered, blue blood stained along the edges. He grimaces and hurries past, ignoring the whistles and shouts of the spectators of whatever duel is going on.

The U-shaped island finally rises into view, spinning like it always does. Martin breathes a sigh of relief and glides past it, muttering under his breath when he sees the landing pad for the hospital, brightly lit as always.

The landing pad creaks under his weight, old and rusty from disuse. One of the lights flicker. The elevator starts to go down, but he doesn't have the time, so he hops down to the ground. Seto groans at the jarring motion, but Martin ignores him and shoulders his way into the warmth of the hospital.

The bells on the door rattle happily when he stumbles in. A human he somewhat recognizes looks up, dark eyes widening at the sight of him. 

"Get me Baki," Martin commands, and the human scurries away. Martin looks around for somewhere to put Seto, but other than the front desk, a few chairs, and some potted plants, there's not much. The human returns quickly, with an angel right on his heels.

"Christ, Jin, you act as if the world is ending," Baki grumbles, wiping his hands on paper towels as he emerges from the side room. He looks up, bright pink eyes going wide at the sight of Martin. "Oh, hell, Martin, you're alive?" He goes behind the desk and leans, grinning, not even glancing down at Seto. "You've been gone for fucking ages, man, Simon and I had placed bets on if you were dead or not. Guess he owes me money, now, so that's- Are those horns?"

Martin drops Seto onto the desk and Baki recoils, nose crinkling. "He's injured. Got shot somewhere in the stomach. Fix him."

Baki laughs and scratches his hand through his white hair, disrupting the neat bun he had in place. "Jesus, you came back with one sense of humor. Just buy a new one, Martin, they aren't that expensive-"

" _Fix_ him, Baki, or I'm going to kill you," Martin snarls, and slams his fist on the desk, cracking the wood. Baki steps back and Jin stumbles away a few feet at the noise.

Baki's eyes go cold and he gives Martin a long stare. His gaze keeps flicking upwards, to where Martin's ram-like horns are curling from his skull. A long minute passes, then, with an exaggerated sigh, Baki grabs Seto from the desk. "Fine, fine. Jin, get room 3 ready. Uh, and then.." He gives a quick glance down. "I dunno, maybe a pint of blood, or whatever. Martin, you stay here. Can't have you germing the room up."

"Just-" Martin starts, and Baki spins around to give him a deadpan stare. After a second of finding his voice, Martin waves him on, quietly saying, "Just take care of him."

Baki stands there, like a lemon, and then gives him a lopsided grin. "Good to have you back, man. Go say hi to your brother."

Jin opens one of the swinging doors for the angel, and then they're gone into the hospital.

Martin lets out a somewhat relieved sigh and promptly collapses into a waiting chair.

[...]

He'd missed it. 

Being up Above. It was home, despite how much he'd hated it at first. And now he's back, more or less still intact. 

More or less.

His and his brother's islands are well-lit with plants and lamplights, though the house on the main island remains dark. The watermill churns quietly, the runes in the artificial river keeping the water regenerating and cycling forever. Martin lands near the front porch, sighing at the ache in his shoulders. The wings worked; they got him off the Ground. But they won't get him any further.

The front door is silent when he pushes it open and cautiously goes inside. He kicks his shoes off and flicks on the light, testing the magic in the air. The strong currents brush by him, whispering quietly. Martin runs a hand along the hallway wall and hurries to his room. He pops off the left wing, then the right, and hangs them on hooks by the door. His main set is laying by the bed where he'd tossed them. He glances over them for any damage, but it doesn't look like anything in his room had been touched in the time he was gone. 

Martin quickly changes into a fresh set of clothes, then pops on his old wings. He hums, rolling his shoulders. With a slight tug on the magic coursing through them, the featherblades extend quickly, glinting in the light shining in from outside. He runs a hand over the leading edge of the right one, fingers digging into familiar grooves. After a moment, he leaves his room and heads towards the washroom. The full-body mirror shows that he's much worse for wear. He'd lost weight, and it's obvious. And his horns- God, they need to go.

Grumbling to himself, Martin bends down, rooting through the cabinets beneath the sink. The saw is right where it always is, tucked above everything else in a small compartment hidden in the wall. He grabs it, yanking the cord out harshly when it gets stuck.

He plugs it into the wall and checks the blade, before quickly flipping the switch on. It screeches to life in his hand, making his arm tremble slightly. He stares at it for a long moment, mulling over the fact that in a moment he'd be in a shit ton of pain. It always hurts more after letting them grow out. He should've taken a handsaw or something to them when he was on the Ground.

"Well," he mutters to his reflection, lifting the buzzsaw up. "Here goes nothing."

[...]

Baki gives his head a second glance when he returns, but then Martin holds out a small bag. The angel sighs and takes it, checking through. "Fifteen grand? Fuck, Martin."

"You keep your mouth shut about this, Baki," Martin mutters as they walk to the room Seto's in. "I know you can't fight well."

"So does everyone," Baki grumbles but still tucks the bribe away in his coat. "Anyway. The human you brought, it's doing alright. Lost some blood, I gave it back, took the bullet out, you know. The usual shit. Jin had to help me with the anatomy, they have... more organs than we do, but oh well. I'm pretty sure I missed anything vital."

"Great to know." Martin passes Baki and shoves through the door. He pauses, blinking at the sight of Seto absolutely drowning in a bed sized for an angel. With a sigh, he glances back at the doctor. Baki brushes past him, going to the cabinets. "I have him out of it right now, but he should wake up soon-ish."

"Soon-ish?"

Baki hikes a shoulder up. "Eh, doses for humans are much smaller than usual. I didn't know how much to give him."

Martin scowls at his back, but shakes the comment off and drags over a chair. Baki raises an eyebrow at the scraping sound but doesn't fully turn to look. "I'm guessing Nitram wasn't home?"

"Does it matter?" Martin kicks his foot up onto a pole beneath the bed and leans back, wings falling into the spaces cut out from the armrests. The metal clanks against the floor.

"Well, somewhat. I had been hoping he'd be there, at least. I haven't seen him around much, and neither has Simon, or- Anyone, for that matter. I'm starting to wonder if he'd gone down to search for your body."

Martin rubs his eyes and dismisses Baki's concern with a wave. "Go mind your own business, Baki, I'll handle it."

There's silence for a moment, then Baki drops the tools he'd been fiddling with. He wordlessly comes over to the bedside opposite of Martin, changes the drip on the IV, and then says, "I'm sure you will."

He leaves without another word. Jin comes by a moment later and shuts the door quietly. Martin lets out a breath he hadn't realized he'd been holding, and leans back in the chair, head hitting the back of it. "Fuck," he mutters to the room.

Martin opens an eye and raises his head slightly to look over at Seto, still passed out on the bed. He looks somewhat better, a little less pale, and definitely not dying.

So Martin says, again, "Fuck."

A moment passes.

"You're going to be the death of me," he admits to the human, and then has nothing else to say.


End file.
